Debian on Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate NAS

[Martin Michlmayr]

Debian testing has support for the Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate
NAS devices now.

They are based on Marvell's Armada 370 which can run armhf but the
chip is a bit dated.

Installation instructions are on the Debian wiki:
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud

Also see the announcement on my blog:
http://www.cyrius.com/blog/debian/marvell/debian-on-seagate-personal-cloud-nas/

[Jorge Gustavo Rocha]

Hi,

I found that it should be possible to install Debian on a Seagate
Personal Cloud and I would like to do it. That is great!

My model is SRN21C (Personal Cloud).

I've followed the available instructions on:
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud

1) The tftp server is running and I'm able to get the files
2) I can access the U-Boot console with clunc and run the commands:

setenv serverip 192.168.1.192
setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.103
tftpboot 0x2000000 uImage
tftpboot 0x5100000 uInitrd
tftpboot 0x5000000 armada-370-seagate-personal-cloud.dtb
setenv fdt_high 0xffffffff
setenv initrd_high 0xffffffff
bootm 0x2000000 0x5100000 0x5000000

But after the message:
Starting kernel ...
nothing more happens. I can't connect with ssh. I can't ping to the
machine. There is no network connection to the NAS.

NAS lights seems ok to me (they go from white to red and then white
again), but the NAS is not listen on the network after 'Sarting kernel...'

How can I check what is going wrong? Is there any log file where to look
for errors? Can I run netconsole or something similar to see what is
going on?

The bootm messages seems ok to me:

Marvell>> bootm 0x2000000 0x5100000 0x5000000
bootm 0x2000000 0x5100000 0x5000000
## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 02000000 ...
Image Name: Debian kernel
Created: 2018-03-04 19:38:06 UTC
Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size: 3709896 Bytes = 3.5 MiB
Load Address: 02000040
Entry Point: 02000040
Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 05100000 ...
Image Name: debian-installer ramdisk
Created: 2018-03-04 19:38:06 UTC
Image Type: ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (uncompressed)
Data Size: 20539095 Bytes = 19.6 MiB
Load Address: 00000000
Entry Point: 00000000
Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 05000000
Booting using the fdt blob at 0x05000000
XIP Kernel Image ... OK
OK
Using Device Tree in place at 05000000, end 0500649a

Starting kernel ...

Any feedback is welcome.

Best regards,

Gustavo
--
Geomaster, Lda
Avenida Barros e Soares, 423
Nogueira
4715-214 Braga
NIF 510906109
Tel [phone]
Tm 910 333 888
Email ***@geomaster.pt
Site geomaster.pt
GPS 41.53322,-8.41929

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Martin Michlmayr
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud
1) The tftp server is running and I'm able to get the files

...

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Starting kernel ...
nothing more happens. I can't connect with ssh. I can't ping to the

So this happens when you try to boot the installer?

I'm not aware of any problems with that but I haven't tested it in a
while (and don't have hardware right now). Simon, can you test if
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud
works for you on the Personal Cloud?

Post by Martin Michlmayr
How can I check what is going wrong? Is there any log file where to look
for errors?

Not at this point, I don't think so.

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Can I run netconsole or something similar to see what is going on?

That's not built into the kernel iirc.

I assume you can still connect to u-boot with clunc, right?

We have received some reports from users that they could no longer
connect to u-boot with clunc after installing Debian. Simon Guinot
(the Seagate NAS expert) investigated this issue quite a bit and
couldn't find the cause. I will add a warning about this to the wiki.
Your issue is different but I wanted to point this out here.

[Jorge Gustavo Rocha]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the feedback.
It would be great if Simon could test the installation with the most
recent version of the installer. I can't boot the installer.

Regarding clunc issues, I found out the netcat behavior has changed for
some reason. I've tried with current netcat version, and clunc fails,
because the call to netcat fails.

So, with recent versions of netcat-openbsd, clunc fails with this error:

nc -u -p 6666 192.168.1.103 6666
usage: nc [-46CDdFhklNnrStUuvZz] [-I length] [-i interval] [-M ttl]
[-m minttl] [-O length] [-P proxy_username] [-p source_port]
[-q seconds] [-s source] [-T keyword] [-V rtable] [-W recvlimit]
[-w timeout]
[-X proxy_protocol] [-x proxy_address[:port]] [destination]
[port]

The work around is to use the package netcat-traditional and edit clunc
to replace the call to nc with nc.traditional. The call will be:
nc.traditional -u -p 6666 192.168.1.103 6666

Both netcat-openbsd and netcat-traditional can coexist.

Regards,

Gustavo

Post by Martin Michlmayr

Post by Martin Michlmayr
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud
1) The tftp server is running and I'm able to get the files

...

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Starting kernel ...
nothing more happens. I can't connect with ssh. I can't ping to the

So this happens when you try to boot the installer?
I'm not aware of any problems with that but I haven't tested it in a
while (and don't have hardware right now). Simon, can you test if
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Seagate/PersonalCloud
works for you on the Personal Cloud?

Post by Martin Michlmayr
How can I check what is going wrong? Is there any log file where to look
for errors?

Not at this point, I don't think so.

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Can I run netconsole or something similar to see what is going on?

That's not built into the kernel iirc.
I assume you can still connect to u-boot with clunc, right?
We have received some reports from users that they could no longer
connect to u-boot with clunc after installing Debian. Simon Guinot
(the Seagate NAS expert) investigated this issue quite a bit and
couldn't find the cause. I will add a warning about this to the wiki.
Your issue is different but I wanted to point this out here.

--
Geomaster, Lda
Avenida Barros e Soares, 423
Nogueira
4715-214 Braga
NIF 510906109
Tel [phone]
Tm 910 333 888
Email ***@geomaster.pt
Site geomaster.pt
GPS 41.53322,-8.41929