Hello,
I began to play with my new smattop and i have a problem.

I successfully install the lastest efika ubuntu and all seems to be OK.

But when the smarttop boots without a screen connected, it seems that linux don't boot "normaly".

The ssh server doesn't accept my login, and it seems it is not my configuration which is used.
I mean, i configured the ssh server to listen on port 443 and the ssh server listen on the port 22.

Could you help me please ?

I also note that the led is yellow when the system boot without screen.

No one have tried to boot a smarttop without a screen connected ?

We know of a problem. We have a kernel which acts a little better. What you're getting is a kernel panic because regardless of a screen being present, Plymouth and GDM will still start.

I suggest you experiment with moving gdm out of your startup or give it a VT to work on not tied to the framebuffer (Xvnc?) and also modify your /boot/boot.script to set "console=ttymxc0" instead of console=tty1 - this will force Plymouth to not try anything with a display.

The systems have HDMI ports and by far, most people want cool desktops and not servers. It doesn't make any sense from a productization point of view to use the i.MX515 as a server chip given the amount of it given to accelerating graphics and video operations - it's an entertainment and automotive processor.. so we concentrated a lot on that.

One option also is to recompile the kernel (source code is at gitorious.org/efikamx/linux-kernel) and take out framebuffer support, if you intend to use it as a server only and for emegergencies you can boot from the SD card with the graphical kernel?

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Matt Sealey

Thanks for your response,

The solutions you gave me doesn't help.

I moved gdm out and also modify /boot/boot.script to set "console=ttymxc0" instead of console=tty1
But it didn't works.

I tryed to pass the "nofb" option to the kernel but it didn't woks.

The Xvnc Solution is not what I want.


I don't understand why i don't have any log of the unsuccessfull boots ?

Any suggestion ?

Thanks for your help.

How about adding "nosplash" to the line to force Plymouth not to start on the framebuffer..

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Matt Sealey

Thanks for the "nosplash" suggestion but it didn't works

Just a queston but how exactly did you update boot.scr? it needs a special utility called mkimage to create a correctly formatted boot.scr. (and you better back up your original boot.scr before hand and have a recovery SD card to boot from to fix it later.

I'm guessing that you didn't actually change the boot options at all.

I just got done mucking around with the experimental gentoo image's boot.scr and root filesystem last night to get it running on the smartbook instead of just the smarttop (and succeeded enough to get an interactive shell on the screen/kb instead of a freeze)

so I could probably help you with this if you are interested.

basically you need a plain text file containing your boot script and then you run mkimage to create a new boot.scr file
once you have modified it.

you should be able to get your current boot script by running strings on boot.scr and saving that to a file. (the first line is the description of the boot script and should be removed from the plain text file.

next be sure to copy boot.scr to boot.scr.dist before you do anything else.

then you might want to use this script to prepare a new boot.scr

#!/bin/sh
mkimage -A arm -T script -C none -n "Efika MX Installer" -d $1 $2

just call the script inside of your /boot partition with the plain text boot script as the first argument and boot.scr as the second argument. and that should update your boot script for real.

you will need the Efika installer SD card to fix things if you bugger up your boot script. just answer no when you are asked if you want to do the install and you will get a shell.
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
and go to /mnt and cp boot.scr.dist (you DID back this up first right?) to boot.scr and you should have the original factory boot script again and have it come up as normal on the next reboot.

I haven't checked any kernel packages yet but it is quite possible that any kernel updates will over-write your boot script. if so then you are likely to have it hang on reboot after an update and need to generate your custom boot script again. (after updating it to be similar to the boot script for the new kernel).

Hopefully we will get a firmware other than uboot in the future and not have to do things like this ever again.

Thanks for your help !

I know the way to make the boot.scr file and I successfully change the kernel options but like I said it didn't works :-(.

But I didn't know the way to fix a bugged kernel/boot.scr so thanks for the information !

Before your help i had to re install the system every time.
I never tried to answer no when the system asked me if I want to do the install :-))

I tried to compile my own kernel and disable FB but without success until now.

I can make a working kernel with FB but the system don't boot without FB and I don't why.

But now I will be able to test more quickly as I don't have to reinstall all the system every time.

I just got my smarttop in the mail today. one of my goals is to build an SD card image that allows the user to boot this machine headless and allow the end user to configure the system over ethernet. I will update this thread when I have made some progress (most likely with a link to the forum post about the SD card image)

+ 1 smarttop for server )) and the same problem here. i've removed everyting related to plymouth in /etc/init.d/ and updated initramfs to get system boot to console. But it still freezes on boot with no monitor connected.

William Schaub

the SD image will be very useful!

We will be pushing out a new kernel tomorrow that fixes the issue. We are (currently, but not soon) setting the initial framebuffer to 320x240, and that seems to cause bad juju. So we've bumped it up to default to 800x600.

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Steev Klimaszewski, Genesi USA Inc.
Senior Software Engineer

I'm just waiting on my HDMI display to get here so I can get started, should be a day or two. would you prefer to just ssh in to a headless machine on a set IP addess to configure it or have some sort of web based set up?

Basically I'm thinking it would be useful to make the headless setup just like setting up one of those cheap linksys routers. (although I'm sure you could log into the console from a display still if you wanted to do it that way)

I'm planning on using the suggestions in the Ubuntu Server thread to make an ubuntu server setup that you can boot and run from sd card directly or install into the internal disk.

I'm looking into various options for something similar to oem-config for a headless machine. worst case I can make my own script that runs when the oem user logs in over ssh.

but There might be something out there that would work over a web browser too. I have an idea about using the power LED to signal that its booted and waiting for first time config vs booted normally.

I will be happy with SSH in, everything else could be set up manually, including password and user change. But web based setup is interesting. What are you planning to use? Webmin?

Basically, it would be perfect that Efika boots with power cord and RJ45 plugged in only and becomes accessible via SSH. That's my dream )

I'm just throwing out ideas at this point. what I put out soon will likely just be you logging in and doing things manually. but I will try yo put in a basic setup script.



what I had i mind for the web would be kind of like a web interface that drove the installer/first time setup and then went away when thats done but i may not have time for that. I know I don't right now.

I think I'm just going to keep it simple for now since anyone using this will already know what to do with a root shell anyway. It will for sure meet my goals for it which is to have a simple SD card I can put in the Efika and run it headless without all of that desktop crap installed.

I've been running my Efika headless this way since lunch yesterday thanks to a new kernel (not sure if its released yet but we are testing it) My image will have this kernel (or the final version, which ever comes first)