openSUSE on CuBox (Day 2)

I blogged a couple of days ago about how there is an openSUSE 12.2 image for the CuBox and how I wasn't getting past the line that stated something like "loading kernel". Well, after some time on the #opensuse-arm channel and some help from mmeister there, the CuBox has now really lifted off on openSUSE.

So, what is needed to get the CuBox up and running on openSUSE? Here's the juicy stuff (first connect up your serial connection with screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 and hit any key on startup to stop autoboot and to get into the uboot command prompt).

setenv kerneladdr 0x2000000
setenv ramdiskaddr 0x3000000
mmcinfo
ext2load mmc 0:1 $kerneladdr boot/linux.vmx
ext2load mmc 0:1 $ramdiskaddr boot/initrd.uboot
setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2"bootm $kerneladdr $ramdiskaddr

That should work for you and you should now be looking at openSUSE booting. There are a couple of interesting points to observe though - probably issues that need attention:

1. ext2load mmc 0:1 $kerneladdr boot/linux.vmx takes a long time
2. ext2load mmc 0:1 $ramdiskaddr boot/initrd.uboot takes ages (a minute)
3. once past that, booting itself takes a long time too

Other than that, the first thing that happens after booting is that you get landed into YaST - a very ugly YaST as the colours don't seem to work properly through screen. You get to choose your keyboard layout and language (works), your timezone (works) and you get to set up the root password and configure a local user (works).

As DHCP was automatically set up, you can check your ip address with ifconfig and try to log in through SSH - this is way more comfortable than messing about through the serial console.

So, the next things that need to be done (IMO) are:

1. see can we get a working boot.scr (i.e. so the above workaround isn't needed)
2. check to see if memory is being reserved for graphics (if so, stop this)
3. see if we can sort out the missing update repo