Lightcrafter does not boot

Peter,

Can you please try the following,

Write the image to the SD card and  check to see the FAT32 partition. Insert the SD card in the LightCrafter, move the switch towards the SD card end and power cycle the board.

The red LED (shown in the image below) should turn green for the boot up to complete.

Regards,

Divya

Hi Peter,

We are yet to put the microSD card bootable image of DLP LightCrafter(TM) on the TI web.

Can you try the following steps?

Look for the "S2" switch which is locted close to the microSD card insertion slot on the top-board. Make sure the S2 switch is set to the 'ON' position.

Now apply power and let us know if it is able to complete boot sequence.

Regards,

Sanjeev

The microSD card image for DM365 can be downloaded from here.

We tried to use uImage from TI DVSDK for DM365, but it takes a long time (about 40 seconds) to boot with this image. it looks like LightCrafter has a special modified smaller kernel, which used on normal boot from nand. We tried to extract it from nand to use in our sd card,but our attempts were unsuccessful.

Is Lightcrafter uImage and targetfs flashed in LightCrafter's nand available for download? 

The DVSDK has been heavily modified for Lightcrafter module. Due to complexities, the targetfs have not been released. Based on the demand, we would consider the release in future. Meanwhile, you can download the SD card image customized for Lightcrafters DM365 here, link.

Also, can you provide some details on what you are trying to achieve, so I can enable you better.

Best Regards,

Divya

Well, I downloaded "DLP300-C200REFDM365: Embedded Linux MicroSD 4GB Image For DM 365", there is a DLP3000-C300REFDM365.bin image (4,4Mb) image file. How can I flash in on sd card? I tryed to use dd command, but it's not work.

We need to make Lightcrafter word as an embedded device, so we decided to copy existing uImage and targetfs to sd card and add our own application, which would send commands to it's own adapter (like loopback in Windows). But in order to solve our problem we need to create a bootable card with the same kernel uImage as in NAND. 

Thanks for sharing more details. The link here provides instructions on copying an image to SD card (for both Windows and Linux OS). Please let me know if you face any other issue.

Best Regards,

Divya

Well, I've unpacked dm365sw_2_5_sd4gb.dd image and put it on sd card using dd command. Unfortunately, there is only one fat32 partition (44Mb) with one file named dm3xx.dat. I can put it into LightCrafter and update it's software, it's work fine, but there is no second linux partition with uImage and rootfs we need. I tryed to get more information about this problem and used few programs like sfdisk, testdisk, gparted:

Testdisk application said that there is a bad ending cylinder (CHS and LBA not match):

There is a screenshot from Ubuntu disk utility: third partition has size = - 62 401 535 bytes

How can we repair second partition to get uImage and rootfs or, perhaps, extract it from dm3xx.dat file?

Best Regards,

Vitaly

Vitaly,

The DM365 boot loader can only read FAT file system. Thus, we place dm3xx.dat file in the FAT32 area. The dual partition is for booting and running from SD card. However, the version on the web is meant to copy the programs into NAND flash, so the linux partition is empty. We just use the same mechanism to allow us to boot and flash NAND and run from NAND, or just boot and run from SD card.

During boot-up, the DM365 takes this dm3xx.dat file that contains the linux kernel, our command interpreter app and base file system and copies it over to NAND flash. On next boot-up the DM365 boatloads the uImage and runs from NAND.

To create your own application, you will need to rebuild the linux kernel along with your app, and recreate this dm3xx.dat. We are working to have LightCrafter as a supported platform in the DM365 DVSDK, but this process is taking longer than expected. Let us explore what if we could provide the kernel object files and see if this can be used to so that you can build your own dm3xx.dat file. 

Thank you for your reply. I know that LightCrafter uses dm3xx.dat file to copy it over to NAND, I also can do it, but I don't want my files were in NAND. I can create bootable sd card with uImage, boot.cmd and boot.scr on the first FAT32 partition and rootfs on the second. I've already created one with dm365 dvsdk and it works correctly, but it takes a long time to boot device and there is fewer devices in /dev directory because of wrong uImage file.

I don't need my own dm3xx.dat file, I just need uImage and targetfs files which are now used in this file. If possible, please, simply give me these files.

Having the file system in SD card is very slow if the SD card has a slow read/write speed. Look for a Class 10 SD card, that will speed things up.

The problem of speed is not in rootfs or SD card, it works fast enough. My problem is in invalid kernel from dm365 DVSDK which is not designed to work with DLP Lightcrafter, so it boots very slow and not all devices are configured correctly. For this reason I need uImage file which is now used in DLP LightCrafter. How can I obtain this file and current targetfs?

Is there any progress in solving my problem? We really need that uImage file and targetfs.

Hi Vitaly,

As mentioned by Pedro earlier, you will need the source files to generate the uimage and targetfs. I recognize this source code is a much needed piece to build your embedded application. Please allow a 1-week time before I update you on where I stand in getting the code and documentation together.

Thanks for understanding and your patience.

Regards,

Divya

Hi Divja,

I think Pedro misunderstood me. He said I will need to rebuild the linux kernel and recreate dm3xx.dat, which is used to put my application to NAND instead of current application, but I don't really need it. I'm going to boot from SD card so I simply need current uImage file and targetfs (tar.gz), which are currently used in dm3xx.dat file. We don't need any source files.  What source files and documentation are you going to provide us after a week?

Hi Vitaly,

To build the uimage, the kernel build system needs to be configured. I believe, it is not possible to extract these files from the NAND flash.

 I offered to provide the modified kernel sources to enable you with building uimage and targetfs.

Regards,

Divya

Vitaly,

Is my understanding correct, you want an image that boots and operates from SD card instead of NAND? We can create that, so you do not have to mess with uImage and file system. It would be easy for me to supply that, except I am testing a much later version of software, so If you want to beta test this version let me know. We have not released this latest version of software since we are trying to fix the USB problems reported in this forum.

To allow flexibility for our users, we are planning to upload the customized files for the linux kernel into the Linux DVSDK repository. This would allow customers to download the Linux sources and target the LightCrafter as a platform option. In this way, customers can customize the build to their needs.

Hi, Pedro, 

You are absolutely right, now lightcrafter boots from NAND and it's targetfs is located in the RAM. We need to make Lightcrafter work as embedded device. For this purpose we want to add our own application, which will be run on LightCrafter interact with exist cmdh application via socket locally. We also need to store some content, so we would prefer targetfs to be modifiable. 

Proceeding from this, we've decided that it would be easier to put uImage and targetfs (not necessarily the latest version, just copy of those that are in NAND now) on bootable sd card and work with lightcrafeter in the usual way like we worked with OmapL138, than creating owr own firmware and flash it ti NAND after each change.

We also planning to use existing RNDIS ethernet connection to communicate with host computer over ethernet via other socket to modify content on sd card via our other application.

To solve these problems we need to move existing uImage and targetfs to sd card, where we will be able to operate filesystem and add our own application parallel to existing cmdh application.

Hi, Is there any progress in solving my problem? We have almost no time.

Vitaly,

Attached is the uImage for LightCrafter linux-2.6.32 2677.uImage.tar.gz and the disk image5280.ramdisk.gz

Thanks, Pedro, but I can't extract these archives. When I try to do it in Ubuntu using console tar, gnome archive manager, Ark or 7z I get the following error:

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

It looks like you are goint to provide us targetfs via ramdisk, how can we modify it?

A week has passed, can anyone rebuild me those damaged archives ???

Sorry for the delay, I was working on debugging the USB issues and not had checked the forum. Let me try that again. Seems the upload to this forum corrupted the files.

5037.uImage.tar.gz

3276.ramdisk.img.tar.gz

Thank you for this files: uImage is correct and now I can mount and modify ramdisk.img on my host computer.

I mounted ramdisk.img and copied all files to the second partition of my bootable sd card. Unfortunately, I received the following error:

VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p2" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
1f00 4096 mtdblock0 (driver?)
1f01 4096 mtdblock1 (driver?)
1f02 5120 mtdblock2 (driver?)
1f03 117760 mtdblock3 (driver?)
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

There is my  boot.cmd file (boot.scr created from this) from first bootable partition of my sd card:

mmc rescan 0
setenv bootargs 'mem=116M console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw noinitrd ip=off video=davincifb:vid0=1216x684x16,4050K:vid1=off:osd0=0x0x8,0K:osd1=0x0x8,0K dm365_imp.oper_mode=0 davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_output=LCD davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_mode=1216x684YUV vpfe_capture.interface=1'
fatload mmc 0 80700000 uImage
bootm 80700000

It looks like I can't boot from /dev/mmcblk0p2 in LightCrafter's boot mode. (When I'm booting LightCrafter in common way, I can insert sd card and find it in /dev)

May be I can modify my bootargs and boot from sd card using my own ramdisk.img? (Copy it from sd card to LightCrafter's RAM during boot)

Regards,

Vitaly

Vitaly

Here are my CONFIG_BOOTARGS:

mem=116M console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/ram0 rw initrd=0x82000000,5M ramdisk_size=15360 ip=off " \
"video=davincifb:vid0=1216x684x16,4050K:vid1=off:osd0=0x0x8,0K:osd1=0x0x8,0K " \
"dm365_imp.oper_mode=0 davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_output=LCD " \
"davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_mode=1216x684YUV vpfe_capture.interface=1"

bootm 0x80700000

Now, I might have uploaded a set of files that boot from NAND instead of SD. I have recompiled making sure the SD card switch was set.

8688.ramdisk.img.tar.gz

2262.uImage.tar.gz

Well, maybe I'm doing somethimg wrong?

The first strange thing:

I was able to modify your previous ramdisk.img mounting it with command:

sudo mount -o loop ramdisk.img /mnt/ramdisk

Now I can't do it with new ramdisk.img: it says I must specify filesystem type, but I can't do it anyway using commands with different fs types, for example:

sudo mount -t ext2 -o loop ramdisk.img /mnt/ramdisk

I still can't boot from sd card (even with new files from previous post). I tried to do it in two ways:

1) I created bootable sd card with two partitions: bootable fat32 and ext2

2) On the first partition I created boot.cmd file with bootargs (like in my previous post)

3) I created boot.scr file using command from uboot-mkimage packet:

mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n 'Execute uImage' boot.cmd boot.scr

4) I put uImage to this bootable partition

5-A) I tried to unpack filesystems's files from mounted ramdisk.img and copy them to the second ext2 partition of sd card

5-B) I tried to put ramdisk.img in the first bootable partition (near boot.cmd, boot.scr and uImage files.

6) I switched Lightcrafter to boot from sd card

Every time I have the same error:

Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
1f00 4096 mtdblock0 (driver?)
1f01 4096 mtdblock1 (driver?)
1f02 5120 mtdblock2 (driver?)
1f03 117760 mtdblock3 (driver?)
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

What am I doing wrong?

Hi Vitaly,

I think you have not set the 'root' in boot arg properly.

try adding this to your boot arg.

 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootdelay=2

Also, which u-boot.bin are you using?

 Well, I used root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw without rootdelay and uImage for booting from sd card provided by Pedro. Now I'm not in Russia, so I'll try to add rootdelay to my bootargs after 20 of july. You can see my bootargs and error messages in previous posts.

Vitaly,

Which uboot are you using?

May be that the u-boot is not recognizing the mmc card (mmc module may not have been included)

Thanks,  Sureshkumar Manimuthu.

This could explain a great deal, I don't install any special u-boot and used default LightCrafter's software (v2.5). I'll definitely check it out when I come back to St. Petersburg.

Well, finally I was able to boot from sd card using this boot.scr to work with rootfs on the second partition:

mmc rescan 0
setenv bootargs 'mem=116M console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootdelay=2 rw noinitrd ip=off video=davincifb:vid0=1216x684x16,4050K:vid1=off:osd0=0x0x8,0K:osd1=0x0x8,0K dm365_imp.oper_mode=0 davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_output=LCD davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_mode=1216x684YUV vpfe_capture.interface=1'
fatload mmc 0 80700000 uImage
bootm 0x80700000

and using this boot.scr to load ramdisk.img from sd card to memory and locate rootfs on LightCragters's RAM:

mmc rescan 0
setenv bootargs 'mem=116M console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/ram0 rw initrd=0x82000000,10M ramdisk_size=10240 ip=off video=davincifb:vid0=1216x684x16,4050K:vid1=off:osd0=0x0x8,0K:osd1=0x0x8,0K dm365_imp.oper_mode=0 davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_output=LCD davinci_enc_mngr.ch0_mode=1216x684YUV vpfe_capture.interface=1'
fatload mmc 0 0x80700000 uImage
fatload mmc 0 0x82000000 ramdisk.img
bootm 0x80700000

In both cases, I encountered the following problem after boot: generated by LightCarfter image and green LED on light engine block flicker all the time. Using the top command I found out that cmdh application uses about 99% of CPU. 

Booting log is identical to normal except for a few additional lines there:

ch0 default output "LCD", mode "NTSC"
davinci_venc davinci_venc: Desired VENC clock not available
davinci_venc davinci_venc: PLL's doesnot yield required                          VENC clk
VPBE Encoder Initialized
Invalid id...

and there is no typical error messages

Database.c:146 >> Error = FAIL
API.c:1546 >> Error = FAIL
API.c:363 >> Error = FAIL
API.c:269 >> Error = FAIL

after "Please press Enter to activate this console." message after boot.

Hi Vitaly,

It is very much possible that the flickering issue is due to the VENC clock error.

Before going into debugging the differences between TI's image and your image, let me understand the purpose of this exercise.

If you want to boot the LightCrafter from SD card (without using the internal NAND) than there is an SD card image available that you can directly use.

If your intention is to modify the filesystem, then we may be able to provide you with tools that can crate the SD card image based on your file system.

Please let us know.

Hi, Sureshkumar,

We need to make Lightcrafter work as embedded device. For this purpose we want to add our own application, which will be run on LightCrafter in parallel with exist cmdh application and interact with it via socket locally. We also need to store some content on sd card. To do this we need to modify rootfs adding our application and making it start automatically at startup.

As you said, there are two ways to solve this problem:

1) Store uImage and unpacked rootfs on bootable sd card with two partitions (fat32 and ext2) and work with it without NAND.

2) Modify existing rootfs (by adding our application) and boot from NAND with existing uImage. Content can be stored on sd card.

The first way looks much easier, so, firstly I'd like to try it, but the second way may work much faster, so I should compare them both.

Regards,

Vitaly

Hi Vitaly,

You need to set the PLLDIV6 to 0x8008 in order to output 54Hz clock to VENC.

This is done in xloader (before uboot).

Regards,

Suresh

Thanks, Suresh.

How can I do it? I don't have any xloader or u-boot sources.

Sureshkumar,

You said there is is an SD card image available to boot LightCrafter from SD card without using the internal NAND, where can I download it?

Hi Vitaly,

Boot from SD card image is not available at present. We will update this thread when it is available.

Regards,

Sanjeev

Three posts ago said that this image available

Well, then how can I set the PLLDIV6 to 0x8008 in order to output 54Hz clock to VENC?

Our company spent 2 months trying to get it work. The first month we could not connect this device because of RNDIS problem, it worked only on 1 of 10 computers and even now it takes about 90 (!) seconds to recognise device every time it is connected (I've posted about this few times, but there is no answer). The second month we tried to modify LightCrafter's software (for what else can it be bought), but there is no any tools or bootable sd card. We had to extend the project because it works bad with default software and there is no documented way to change it's software. It's absolutely useless now.

When any tools and documentation will be available (Software developer guide, for example) will be available???

Vitaly,

We regret for the confusion caused. And, sorry for the difficulties you are facing. The SD card boot image is available for previous version which does not fix the USB issue. I will have to update the code to make it compatible with the newer version of the GUI (v3.8) and include the USB fix.

We have considered your request and scoping the source code release of DM365. Please allow couple of days before I can update you on the progress we make.

Thanks,

Divya

Hello,

Two weeks passed, is there any progress in solving my problem? (boot lightcrafter from sd card and start it's standart application)