Thanks.

The problem is that my 3.x kernel (openpli 3.0) somethimes crashes when booting from a long night deep standby. And the cause is the wifi driver.

Due to these kernel problems with the wifi i have excluded wifi support from the kernel. But this means every time I want to update openpli, I have to compile myself the new kernel.

Therefore it would be easier just to remove the hardware part and keep using standard pre-compiled openpli images.

I didn't yet open my box in between.

Hi,

I might have a loose connection on my mini-pci wifi adapter inside my dm8000. Somethimes I have connection, somethimes not.

Are there instructions available on how to remove the adapter, clean out the contact points, and reinsert it into the pci slot? Is this possible or is it glued to the board?

Thanks.

Hi,

I was wondering if the dreambox (dm8000) supports virtual consoles like a normal linux pc does?

to see boot messages, I have to connect a serial cable (with kernel option console=ttyS0,115200).

I tried console=tty0 but then the box doesn't boot. kernel panic. (probably tty0 isn't compiled in?)

It would be interesting to see boot messages on tv before the enigma splash starts up.

Thanks for the info. I'll make some time to try out the 2.8.4 release sooner or later and hope to see the same effects so I can also be sure that it is software related. (that will keep me off from worrying)

In the mean time, a simple way to boot from usb (stick of 2GB is more than enough) is :
format a usb stick with 2 partitions :
- first partition : vfat around 100MB is sufficient. In there you place autoexec.bat wich includes the same lines as you find in /boot but you have to change root to root=/dev/sdc2 and change rootfstype=ext3
and add panic=10 (details can be found when googling for linux kernel parameters). Copy all the files of /boot from your dreambox on this partition(be carefull about symlinks, they are not supported in vfat, so you have to place there the real files)

- second partition : ext3, make it 512MB or higher, but you can disable (with command chattr -R +A and chattr -R -j) journalling, access-time logging. In there you copy the whole / (root tree) that you have on your dreambox. But you must leave /dev, /autofs, /proc , /sys, /var empty. You don't need to copy /boot as it is copied on the first partition.

- In /etc/fstab comment out the lines that mount mtdblock2, mtdblock3 (as this is flash, and not needed when booting from usb)

In the second stage loader you must set the first boot source to usb and second to flash.

When there is no compact flash and sd-card inserted, your usb stick (only one inserted) will be seen by the kernel as sdc. (thats why you need to mention rootfs=/dev/sdc2)

This way, your receiver will run perfectly and the internal flash is only once used at boot time (the second stage loader is used to jump directly to usb). No jffs2 errors anymore as there are no jffs2 partitions used in this config.

My stick (sandisk cruzer blade) is working fine now. The boot process is much quicker as ext3 filesystem takes much less time to mount than a JFFS2 filesystem.

by the way, I'm running openpli. not sure if this is OE 1.6 based. Do you have an image 1.5 based? So I can make a test? DM confirmed me that ECC problems are hardware related?

Hi,

I modified the /usr/bin/enigma2.sh to reboot the server when "dmesg" reports CRC problems :

I do not have my scripts with me for the moment. but this could help:

dmesg > /media/hdd/movie/dmesg.out

grep CRC /media/hdd/movie/dmesg.out
ret=$?
if [ $ret -eq 0 ] ; then
/sbin/reboot
fi

as long as there is CRC errors detected the device will reboot itself. My device reboots itself once after a deep standby.(but this can perhaps vary). But after a reboot when there are no more CRC errors , enigma starts up correctly.

Another workaround is to buy a usb stick, and boot from usb. (in bios it is possible to config primary boot source first usb and then flash if usb is not found). but you have some work to get the usb stick working. I'm going this way to prevent much writes in the nand flash, but my solution is not yet 100% working. (when my usb stick has worn out, just put a new one in.)

I fear that the nand flash wears out quickly, but I may be wrong. anyway, this month my dm8000 will be returned for RMA fixing. (I hope I'll get back my device within reasonable time)

Hello,

I have read your post about JFFS2 CRC and ECC problems. I have the same problem: deep standby for a few hours and I have already ECC problems on the first boot. A few reboots and the ECC are gone. (I 'solved' it myself with a workaround script to grep on ECC at boot time and initiate a reboot if ECC detected). I mailed support from dream multimedia and they proposed to rma the box as ECC are Flash memory errors. So this month my box will go back for repair.

For this reason, I'm investigating if it is possible to not boot anymore from internal flash but from CF or USB. If my CF or usb wears out, just put in a new stick or card.

Hi,

I want to boot my device from usb.
What I did is :
- a usb stick with 2partitions : 1st is fat32 and second is ext3
- I put in the first partition autoexec.bat and vmlinux.gz. My autoexec.bat looks like this :
/usb/vmlinux.gz console=null rootdelay=10 root=/dev/sdc2 rootfstype=ext3 rw
- in my dreambox bios I say first boot from usb, second is flash.
- I put in the second partition a complete copy of what I have in my root flash (/dev/mtdblock3)

This works perfectly. although sometimes the box doesn't boot (oled display stays on "/usb/vmlinux.gz"). I think it is related to the "root=/dev/sdc2". In fact, as the stick is usb, I do not really know that the stick will always be /dev/sdc. (as the dvd-rom is internally connected via sata to usb, the CF reader is internally on the USB bus, it can happen that /dev/sdc is sometimes another device instead of my usb stick).

How can I be 100% sure that my file system will be on /dev/sdc (and thus not on /dev/sdd,...) or do I have to specify root=.... (something else) ?

Is this problem also there with CF card ? I guess so as the CF reader is also on internal USB)

Anyone experience with booting from usb with DM8000?

Hi,

Is the mtd-utils package somewhere available for download for the latest firmware on the DM8000. I suspect a bad flash block and want to mark it as locked.

thank you.

Thanks for your tip. I'll try it out.

I also saw this message in dmesg :

Bad eraseblock 719 at 0x059e0000
Bad eraseblock 1693 at 0x0d3a0000
Creating 7 MTD partitions on "NAND 256MiB 3,3V 8-bit":
0x0000000000000000-0x0000000010000000 : "complete"
0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000100000 : "loader"
0x0000000000100000-0x0000000000400000 : "boot partition"
0x0000000000400000-0x0000000004000000 : "root partition"
0x0000000004000000-0x0000000008000000 : "home partition"
0x0000000008000000-0x000000000f800000 : "unused partition"
0x000000000f800000-0x0000000010000000 : "preset partition"

The bad reaseblock is in the root partition. could it be related?

(nand is allowed to have bad eraseblocks at shipping. so for the moment I do not think a return for repair is needed.)

Is this forum also followed up by dream multimedia technicians itself?

From time to time, when starting up from poweroff (deep standby) I see these messages appearing :

JFFS2 notice: (27) check_node_data: wrong data CRC in data node at 0x00645000: read 0xd608c0ba, calculated 0xda5f595a

The result is that enigma2 somethimes does not start properly (tuner config not correct or somethimes or bus error when starting enigma binary)

After a warm reboot, the messages are gone. they only appear in first boot from a coldstart. Is this a software or hardware error causing this?

Any idea what could cause this problem?