On Fri, Jul 07, 2017 at 06:19:29PM -0400, David Niklas wrote:
On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 13:21:56 +0200
Actually, my PC has a kernel fault
It took me a moment to guess that you abbreviate PocketChip as "PC". My mind went like: "What? Why is he talking about his Personal Computer now?" :)
(It's a long story of ntc's evil doing),
Why do you believe that ntc is evil?
and the Linux kernel claims that it is not tainted. I don't know if that covers firmware, but at least there are no modules that are non-free.
I don't understand the paragraph above. Do you talk about mainline linux kernel, ntc's kernel fork for Chip, ... Can you please clarify?
Best bet is to use libre-linux mainline and besides that just attempt to deblob ntc's components by hand, which shouldn't be a problem long term cause it doesn't look like they maintain any of this stuff at all anyway and it's very likely the only blobs are in the kernel anyway however not a sure one.
I ditched all the custom NTC stuff and went for vanilla Debian. I have managed to install Debian Stretch (current Stable) on a USB stick using Debian Installer. I am using a self-compiled mainline U-Boot via sunxi-fel to circumvent the U-Boot version on NAND provided by the manufacturer which can not boot from USB.
<snip>
I've found two faults that cannot be traced without a postmortem and I'm really sick of accidentally causing this thing to manifest said problems and then loosing all the work that I did in between my backup periods.
How can you be sure it is a kernel bug and not another problem? Can you give us some details. Did you ask on ntc's user forum or did you file a bug report Can't you improve you backup strategy - for example commit to an external git repo; or synchronize with another stable working computer?
I'm in need of a way to boot PC without flashing the NAND I there a way to do this? So far my search results have been unsuccessful.
1. Well, you can take your Chip out of the housing and install the distro of you choice on a USB-stick and use it as a regular Chip.
2. Can you get PocketChip into fel-mode without taking it out of the enclosure? Ntc's documentation claims it is not possible but there is a forum thread about a reboot option into fel-mode. I have no PoketChip and leave it up to you to research the answers to this questions.
Another point is if the distro of you choice on a USB-stick will support PocketChips hardware (e.g. Keyboard, LCD-Screen) out of the box. Do you have a serial-to-usb-cable to interact with PocketChip?
kind regards Pablo