Brief version: How can I debug my Chromebook woes when trying to run kernel-next with the Mali drivers?
I followed this guide: Graphics and Compute Development on Samsung Chromebook It worked, but I'm left with an incredibly unstable system. I'm running a Samsung Chromebook, model number SNOW FREMONT A-E 0878.
A list of stability issues so far:
I'm even sure there's more, but for now that should give a good idea of what's up: ridiculous instability. I might be able to throw the image on a USB drive and use a USB wifi adapter and skate by some of this, but that's really not a sufficient solution. Given that and the incredible unlikeliness that anyone here has already had or is having this issue, I'd really like it if someone could tell me how to debug these issues as I don't have any clue how to approach it. I have a bit of familiarity with the Linux kernel and a ton with C, but not a darn clue how I'd go about debugging Linux running on a Chromebook.
Hope this is related enough to be discussed here - I certainly don't know where else to discuss problems with this guide.
Hm, could it possibly be related to what kind of SD card is being used? I'm using a Sandisk Pixtor 32 GB Class 10 SD card. I ask because I vaguely remember similar problems with running the Raspberry Pi device with a greater-than-Class 6 SD card (although I did not experience them myself.)
I'd like to test this hypothesis, but I don't have any other free SD cards on hand. I bought this one specifically to do this guide, in fact.
I've seen problems with specific SD vendors not playing nice in the past with certain boards, so it wouldn't surprise me! For what it's worth, I use a mixture of Sandisk 8GB SDHC class 4, and Sandisk Ultra 8GB MicroSDHC class 10, and I have SOME issues on the former but as long as I don't do anything too taxing, i.e. boot and immediately mount NFS/USB then it's fine. Maybe someone out there can fix and push upstream?
So Chris are you saying that you do have the problem with some SD cards and not others? I'm having the problem with the internal mmc itself.
From what I can tell, it may be a combination of both. I've migrated over to USB for the time being, which works, although the USB stick is pretty crappy. However, Wifi still occasionally gives out, and in fact, you're right: I can still see the internal mmc crashing once in a while, even though I'm not doing anything with it.
I don't know if I have enough free-time to look for what the actual issue might be. Part of me wants to try jumping back in kernel-next and trying to see if the issue still occurs months ago, but then I don't know what patches I may need to leave in for the ARM Chromebook to still boot properly.
Hi fattire,
Sorry, misread your original post, I do see some instability sometimes on certain SD cards, but generally it doesn't stop me mounting nfs and testing things over that. I only really use the SD card for booting. I haven't tried using internal mmc but its surprising that doesn't work. I'll feed back these issues to the relevant team so they can look into them for a future release.
Thanks,
Chris
Hey Chris,
It's been a couple months. Any words on fixes for those of us with internal emmc issues?
Update: I spent a little more time looking at the crash. It's so totally random-- can be while booting, but can also be after 3-5 minutes after logging in.
Since the panic doens't seem to write anywhere, I grabbed a screenshot to see what was up... looks like s5p_mfc_init_pm was failing to get a clock-gating control, whatever that means. I found this, and applied it, along with this to the 3.8 kernel (had to tweak a little), but didn't seem to do anything.
Do i give up? Someone out there must know what to do...
I've let our team know you are still in need of some help here. In future if you can make a discussion as a question it will ensure it gets more visibility as unanswered questions remain at the top of the homepage. I've moved this to a question now so you will be able to select an answer as correct and helpful once this has been resolved.
Ryan
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