musl

Solar Cluster: Gentoo Linux MUSL for ARMv5 finally built

It’s taken several months and had a few false starts, but at long last I have some stage tarballs for Gentoo Linux MUSL for ARMv5 processors.  I’m not the only one wanting such a port, even looking for my earlier thread on the matter, I stumbled on this post.  (Google translate is hopeless with Russian, but I can get the gist of what’s being said.)

This was natively built on the TS-7670 using an external hard drive connected over USB 2.0 as both swap and the chroot.  It took two passes to clean everything up and get something that’s in a “release-able” state.

I think my next steps now will be:

  • Build an updated kernel … I might see if I can expose that I²C register via a sysfs file or something that collectd can pick up whilst I’m at it.  I have the kernel sources and bootloader sources.
  • Prepare the 32GB MicroSD card I bought a few weeks back with the needed partitions and load Gentoo onto that.
  • Install the MicroSD card and boot off it.
  • Back up the eMMC
  • Re-format the eMMC and copy the MicroSD card to it.

It’s supposed to be wet this weekend, so it sounds like a good project for indoors.

Solar Cluster: arm-unknown-linux-musleabi… saga part IV

So, at long last, I finally saw this in my chroot‘s /var/log/emerge.log:

1524887925: Started emerge on: Apr 28, 2018 03:58:45
1524887926:  *** emerge --oneshot sys-devel/gcc::musl
1524888211:  >>> emerge (1 of 1) sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0 to /
1524888212:  === (1 of 1) Cleaning (sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0::/root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-7.3.0.ebuild)
1524888307:  === (1 of 1) Compiling/Packaging (sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0::/root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-7.3.0.ebuild)
1525472690:  === (1 of 1) Merging (sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0::/root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-7.3.0.ebuild)
1525472838:  >>> AUTOCLEAN: sys-devel/gcc:7.3.0
1525473358:  === (1 of 1) Post-Build Cleaning (sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0::/root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-7.3.0.ebuild)
1525473358:  ::: completed emerge (1 of 1) sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0 to /
1525473360:  *** Finished. Cleaning up...
1525473373:  *** exiting successfully.

That’s 6 days, 18 hours and 32 minutes, of solid compiling. BUT WE GOT THERE!

What’s left? This:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild     U  ] sys-libs/musl-1.1.19 [1.1.18]
[binary   R    ] sys-libs/zlib-1.2.11-r1
[binary   R    ] app-arch/xz-utils-5.2.3
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[binary   R    ] sys-libs/readline-7.0_p3
[binary   R    ] virtual/libintl-0-r2
[binary   R    ] dev-lang/python-exec-2.4.5
[binary   R    ] virtual/libiconv-0-r2
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/gentoo-functions-0.12
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/libpcre-8.41-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/sed-4.2.2
[binary   R    ] app-arch/bzip2-1.0.6-r8
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/gmp-6.1.2
[binary   R    ] app-shells/bash-4.4_p12
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/file-5.32
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/gnuconfig-20170101
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/mpfr-3.1.6
[binary   R    ] app-misc/c_rehash-1.7-r1
[binary   R    ] app-misc/mime-types-9
[binary   R    ] app-arch/tar-1.29-r3
[binary   R    ] app-arch/gzip-1.8
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/mpc-1.0.3
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/gcc-config-1.8-r1
[binary   R    ] app-misc/editor-wrapper-4
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/less-529
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/debianutils-4.8.3
[binary   R    ] net-libs/libmnl-1.0.4
[binary   R    ] sys-libs/libseccomp-2.3.2
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/popt-1.16-r2
[binary   R    ] sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.43.6
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/binutils-config-5-r4
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/libffi-3.2.1
[binary   R    ] virtual/libffi-3.0.13-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/sysvinit-2.88-r9
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/opentmpfiles-0.1.3
[binary   R    ] virtual/tmpfiles-0
[binary   R    ] app-text/manpager-1
[binary   R    ] sys-libs/cracklib-2.9.6-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/install-xattr-0.5
[binary   R    ] app-editors/nano-2.8.7
[binary   R    ] app-portage/elt-patches-20170815
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/m4-1.4.17
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[binary   R    ] sys-devel/autoconf-wrapper-13
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/bison-3.0.4-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/flex-2.6.4-r1
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/libltdl-2.4.6
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/automake-wrapper-10
[binary   R    ] app-text/sgml-common-0.6.3-r6
[binary   R    ] dev-libs/libgpg-error-1.27-r1
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[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-Data-Dumper-2.160.0-r1
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-Test-Harness-3.360.100_rc-r3
[ebuild  N     ] perl-core/File-Temp-0.230.400-r1
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-File-Temp-0.230.400-r5
[ebuild  N     ] perl-core/File-Path-2.130.0
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-File-Path-2.130.0
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[ebuild   R    ] sys-apps/coreutils-8.28-r1
[ebuild     U  ] app-admin/eselect-1.4.12 [1.4.8]
[ebuild     U  ] app-eselect/eselect-python-20171204 [20160516]
[ebuild     U  ] sys-devel/patch-2.7.6-r1 [2.7.5]
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[binary   R    ] virtual/shadow-0
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker-7.100.200_rc-r4
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[ebuild  N     ] dev-perl/Text-Unidecode-1.270.0
[ebuild  N     ] dev-perl/libintl-perl-1.240.0-r2
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[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/expat-2.2.5  USE="unicode -examples -static-libs"
[ebuild   R    ] sys-process/psmisc-22.21-r3
[ebuild  N     ] sys-libs/gdbm-1.13-r2  USE="readline -berkdb -exporter -nls -static-libs"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/groff-1.22.2  USE="-X -examples" L10N="-ja"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libelf-0.8.13-r2  USE="-debug -nls"
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/libelf-2
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libgcrypt-1.8.1  USE="-doc -static-libs"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-perl/XML-Parser-2.440.0
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/perl-File-Spec-3.630.100_rc-r4
[ebuild  N     ] dev-perl/Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.330.0-r1
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/texinfo-6.3  USE="-nls -static"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/iniparser-3.1-r1  USE="-doc -examples -static-libs"
[ebuild  N     ] app-portage/portage-utils-0.64  USE="-nls -static"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/openssl-1.0.2o  USE="asm sslv3 tls-heartbeat zlib -bindist -gmp -kerberos -rfc3779 -sctp -sslv2 -static-libs {-test} -vanilla"
[binary  N     ] dev-lang/python-2.7.14-r1  USE="ipv6 ncurses readline ssl (threads) (wide-unicode) xml (-berkdb) -build -doc -examples -gdbm -hardened -libressl -sqlite -tk -wininst"
[binary  N     ] sys-apps/openrc-0.34.11  USE="ncurses netifrc unicode -audit -debug -newnet -pam (-prefix) (-selinux) -static-libs" 
[ebuild  N     ] net-misc/netifrc-0.5.1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/grep-3.0
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/findutils-4.6.0-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/kbd-2.0.4
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/busybox-1.28.0  USE="ipv6 static -debug -livecd -make-symlinks -math -mdev -pam -savedconfig (-selinux) -sep-usr -syslog (-systemd)"
[binary   R    ] virtual/service-manager-0
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/binutils-2.29.1-r1
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[binary   R    ] sys-apps/gawk-4.1.4
[binary   R    ] virtual/editor-0
[binary   R    ] sys-devel/make-4.2.1
[binary   R    ] sys-process/procps-3.3.12-r1
[binary   R    ] virtual/dev-manager-0-r1
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/which-2.21
[ebuild  N     ] net-misc/iputils-20171016_pre  USE="arping filecaps ipv6 openssl ssl -SECURITY_HAZARD -caps -clockdiff -doc -gcrypt
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[binary   R    ] virtual/pager-0
[binary   R    ] sys-apps/diffutils-3.5
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[binary   R    ] virtual/libc-1
[binary   R   ~] sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0
[binary   R    ] virtual/pkgconfig-0-r1
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lang/python-3.5.5  USE="ipv6 ncurses readline ssl (threads) xml -build -examples -gdbm -hardened -libressl -sqlite {-test} -tk -wininst"
[ebuild  N     ] app-misc/ca-certificates-20170717.3.36.1  USE="-cacert -insecure_certs"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/util-linux-2.30.2-r1  USE="cramfs ncurses readline suid unicode -build -caps -fdformat -kill -nls -pam -python (-selinux) -slang -static-libs (-systemd) {-test} -tty-helpers -udev" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_5 -python2_7 -python3_4 -python3_6" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 -python3_4 -python3_6"
[ebuild     U  ] app-misc/pax-utils-1.2.3 [1.1.7]
[ebuild     U  ] sys-apps/sandbox-2.13 [2.10-r4]
[ebuild     U  ] net-misc/rsync-3.1.3 [3.1.2-r2]
[ebuild  N     ] net-firewall/iptables-1.6.1-r3  USE="ipv6 -conntrack -netlink -nftables -pcap -static-libs"
[ebuild     U  ] dev-libs/libpipeline-1.4.2 [1.4.0]
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/man-db-2.7.6.1-r2  USE="gdbm manpager zlib -berkdb -nls (-selinux) -static-libs"
[ebuild     U  ] sys-apps/kmod-24 [23] PYTHON_TARGETS="-python3_6%"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/pyblake2-1.1.0  PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 (-pypy) -python3_4 -python3_6"
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[ebuild  N     ] dev-util/gtk-doc-am-1.25-r1
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libxml2-2.9.7  USE="ipv6 readline -debug -examples -icu -lzma -python -static-libs {-test}" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 -python3_4 -python3_6"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-devel/gettext-0.19.8.1  USE="cxx ncurses openmp -acl -cvs -doc -emacs -git -java (-nls) -static-libs"
[ebuild  N     ] app-text/build-docbook-catalog-1.19.1
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libxslt-1.1.30-r2  USE="crypt -debug -examples -python -static-libs" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7"
[ebuild  N     ] app-text/docbook-xsl-stylesheets-1.79.1-r2  USE="-ruby"
[ebuild  N     ] app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.1.2-r6
[ebuild  N     ] dev-util/intltool-0.51.0-r2
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/glib-2.52.3  USE="mime xattr -dbus -debug (-fam) (-selinux) -static-libs -systemtap {-test} -utils" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7"
[ebuild  N     ] x11-misc/shared-mime-info-1.9  USE="{-test}"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/setuptools-36.7.2  USE="{-test}" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 (-pypy) (-pypy3) -python3_4 -python3_6"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/certifi-2017.4.17  PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 (-pypy) (-pypy3) -python3_4 -python3_6"
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/pyxattr-0.5.5  USE="-doc {-test}" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 (-pypy) -python3_4"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/portage-2.3.24-r1  USE="(ipc) native-extensions xattr -build -doc -epydoc -gentoo-dev (-rsync-verify) (-selinux)" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5 (-pypy) -python3_4 -python3_6"
[ebuild  N     ] app-admin/perl-cleaner-2.25
[binary   R    ] virtual/man-0-r1
[binary   R    ] virtual/modutils-0
[ebuild  N     ] sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.43.6  USE="-fuse (-nls) -static-libs"
[ebuild     U  ] virtual/package-manager-1 [0]
[ebuild  N     ] sys-apps/iproute2-4.14.1-r2  USE="iptables ipv6 -atm -berkdb -minimal (-selinux)"
[binary   R    ] virtual/ssh-0
[ebuild  N     ] net-misc/wget-1.19.1-r2  USE="ipv6 pcre ssl zlib -debug -gnutls -idn -libressl -nls -ntlm -static {-test} -uuid"
[ebuild   R    ] dev-util/pkgconfig-0.29.2  USE="-internal-glib*"

!!! The following binary packages have been ignored due to non matching USE:

    =dev-util/pkgconfig-0.29.2 internal-glib
    =sys-apps/attr-2.4.47-r2 nls
    =sys-apps/man-db-2.7.6.1-r2 nls
    =dev-libs/libelf-0.8.13-r2 nls
    =sys-apps/shadow-4.5 -linguas_cs -linguas_da -linguas_de -linguas_es -linguas_fi -linguas_fr -linguas_hu -linguas_id -linguas_it -linguas_ja -linguas_ko -linguas_pl -linguas_pt_BR -linguas_ru -linguas_sv -linguas_tr -linguas_zh_CN -linguas_zh_TW nls

NOTE: The --binpkg-respect-use=n option will prevent emerge
      from ignoring these binary packages if possible.
      Using --binpkg-respect-use=y will silence this warning.

I think that’s broken the back of the job.  Of course when I come to running Catalyst, I’ll have to do it all over again, but at least now the environment is clean.

Solar Cluster: Next steps, better control of the charger

So, a few weeks ago I installed a new battery charger, and tweaked it so that the solar did most of the leg work during the day, and the charger kept the batteries topped up at night.

I also discussed the addition of a new industrial PC to perform routing and system monitoring functions… which was to run Gentoo Linux/musl. For now, that little PC is still running Debian Stretch, but for 45 days, it was rock solid. The addition of this box, and taking on the role of router to the management network meant I could finally achieve one of my long-term goals for the project: decommissioning the old server.

The old server is still set up with all my data and software… but now the back-up cron job calls /sbin/poweroff when it’s done, and the BIOS is set to wake the machine up in the evening ready to receive a back-up late at night.

In its place, a virtual machine clone of the box, handles my email and all the old functions of that server. This was all done just prior to my father and I leaving for a 3 week holiday in the Snowy Mountains.

I did have a couple of hiccups with Ceph OSDs crashing … but basically re-starting the daemons (done remotely whilst travelling through Cowra) got everything back up. A bit of placement group cleaning, and everything was back online again. I had another similar hiccup coming out of Maitland, but once again, re-starting the daemons fixed it. No idea why it crashed, that’s something I’ll have to investigate.

Other than that, the cluster itself has run well.

One thing that did momentarily kill the industrial PC though: I wandered down to the rack with a small bus-powered 2.5″ HDD with the intent of re-starting my Gentoo builds. This HDD had the same content as the 3.5″ HDD I had plugged in before. I figured being bus powered, I would not be dependent on mains, and it could just chug away to its heart’s content.

No such luck, the moment I plugged that drive in, the little machine took great umbrage to the spinning rust now vacuuming the electrons away from its core functions, and shut down abruptly. I’ve now brought my 3.5″ drive and dock down, plugged that into the wall, and have my builds resuming. If power goes off, hopefully the machine either handles the loss of swap gracefully. If it does crash, the watchdog will take care of it.

Thus, I have the little TS-7670 first attempting a build of gcc, to see how we go. Finger’s crossed our power should remain up. There was at least one outage in the time we were away, but hopefully we should get though this next build!

The next step I think should be to add some control of the mains charger to allow the batteries to be boosted to full charge overnight. The thinking is a simple diode-OR arrangement. Many comparators such as the LM393 have an open-collector output, which gives us this for free.

The theory is this.

The battery bank powers a simple circuit which runs of a 5V regulator. That regulator powers a dual comparator IC and provides a reference voltage. The comparator draws bugger all power, so I’m happy to use a linear PSU here. It’s mainly there as a voltage reference.

Precision isn’t really the aim here, so adjustable pots will make life easier.

The voltages from the battery bank and the solar panel are fed through voltage dividers to bring the voltages down to below 5V, then those voltages are individually fed into separate pots that control the hysteresis. I can adjust all points of the system.

The idea is that should the batteries get too low, or the sun go down, one or the other (or both) comparators will go low and pull down on R2. If the batteries are high and the sun is up, nothing pulls on R2 so the REMOTE+ pin on the HEP-600C-12 is allowed to float to +5V, turning off the mains charger.

The advantage of this is there’s no programming of a microcontroller, it’s just analogue electronics. The LM393s are pretty hardy things, the datasheet says they’ll run at 36V and can accept a maximum voltage of VCC-1.5V; so if I run at 5V, 3.5V is my recommended maximum. The adjustment pots should let me set a threshold voltage that avoids going above this.

I mainly need 5V for the HEP-600C-12, and for providing that stable known voltage reference. The LM78C05 should be fine for this.

Once I’ve done that, I should be able to wind that charger back up to its factory setting of 14.4V, which will mean that overnight the batteries will be charged back to full charge.

Solar Cluster: Beware, I’m ARMed

Last night, I got home, having made a detour on my way into work past Jaycar Wooloongabba to replace the faulty PSU.
It was a pretty open-and-shut case, we took it out of the box, plugged it in, and sure enough, no fan.  After the saleswoman asked the advice of a co-worker, it was confirmed that the fan should be running.
It took some digging, but they found a replacement, and so it was boxed up (in the box I supplied, they didn’t have one), and I walked out the door with PSU No. 3.
I had to go straight to work, so took the PSU with me, and that evening, I loaded it into the top box to transport home on the bicycle.
I get home, and it’s first thing on my mind.  I unlock the top box, get it out, and still decked out in my cycling gear, helmet and all (needed the headlight to see down the back of the rack anyway), I get to work.
I put the ring lugs on, plug it into the wall socket and flick the switch.
Nothing.
Toggle the switch on the front, still nothing.
Tried the other socket on the outlet, unplugging the load, still nothing.  Did the 10km trip from Milton to The Gap kill it?
Frustrated, I figure I’ll switch a light on.  Funny… no lights.
I wander into the study… sure enough, the router, modem and switch are dead as doornails.  Wander out to the MDB outside, saw the main breaker was still on, and tried hitting the test button.  Nothing.
I wander back inside, switching the bike helmet for my old hard hat, since it looks as if I’ll need the headlight a bit longer, then take a sticky beak down the road to see if anyone else is facing the same issue.
Sure enough, I look down the street, everyone’s out.
So there goes my second attempt at bootstrapping Gentoo, and my old server’s uptime.
The power did return about an hour or so later.  The PSU was fine, you don’t think of the mains being out as the cause of your problems.
I’ll re-start my build, but I’m not going to lose another build to failing power.  Nope, had enough of that for a joke.
I could have rigged up a UPS to the TS-7670, but I already have one, and it’s in the very rack where it’ll get installed anyway.  Thus, no time like the present to install it.
I’ll have to configure the switch to present the right VLANs to the TS-7670, but once I do that, it’ll be able to take over the role of routing between the management VLAN and the main network.
I didn’t want to do this in a VM because that means exposing the hosts and the VMs to the management VLAN, meaning anyone who managed to compromise a host would have direct access to the BMCs on the other nodes.
This is not a network with high bandwidth demands, and so the TS-7670 with its 100Mbps Ethernet (built into the SoC; not via USB) is an ideal machine for this task.
Having done this, all that’s left to do is to create a 2GB dual-core VM which will receive the contents of the old server, then that server can be shut down, after 8 years of good service.  I’ll keep it around for storing the on-site backups, but now I can keep it asleep and just wake it up with Wake-on-LAN when I want to make a back-up.
This should make a dint in our electricity bill!
Other changes…

  • Looks like we’ll be upgrading the solar with the addition of another 120W panel.
  • I will be hooking up my other network switches, the ADSL router and ADSL modem up to the battery bank on the cluster, just got to get some suitable cable for doing so.
  • I have no faith in this third PSU, so already, I have a MeanWell HEP-600C coming.  We’ll wire up a suicide lead to it, and that can replace the Powertech MP-3089 + Redarc BCDC1225, as the MeanWell has a remote on/off feature I can use to control it.

Solar Cluster: History repeats: another PSU fan bites the dust

Perhaps literally… it has bitten the dust.  Although I wouldn’t call its installed location, dusty.  Once again, the fan in the mains power supply has carked it.

Long-term followers of this project may remember that the last PSU failed the same way.

The reason has me miffed.  All I did with the replacement, was take the PSU out of its box, loosen the two nuts for the terminals, slip the ring lugs for my power lead over the terminals, returned the nuts, plugged it in and turned it on.

While it is running 24×7, there is nothing in the documentation to say this PSU can’t run that way.  This is what the installation looks like.

If it were dusty, I’d expect to be seeing hardware failures in my nodes.

This PSU is barely 4 months old, and earlier this week, the fan started making noises, and requiring percussive maintenance to get started. Tonight, it failed. Completely, no taps on the case will convince it to go.

Now, I need to keep things running until the weekend. I need it to run without burning the house down.

Many moons ago, my father bought a 12V fan for the caravan. Cheap and nasty. It has a slider switch to select between two speeds; “fast” and “slow”, which would be better named “scream like a banshee” and “scream slightly less like a banshee”. The speed reduction is achieved by passing current through a 10W resistor, and achieves maybe a 2% reduction in motor RPM. As you can gather, it proved to be a rather unwelcome room mate, and has seen its last day in the caravan.

This fan, given it runs off 12V, has proven quite handy with the cluster. I’ve got my SB-50 “load” socket hanging out the front of the cluster. A little adaptor to bring that out to a cigarette lighter socket, and I can run it off the cluster batteries. When a build job has gotten a node hot and bothered, sitting this down the bottom of the cluster and aiming it at a node has cooled things down well.

Tonight, it has another task … to try and suck the hot air out of the PSU.

That’s the offending power supply.  A PowerTech MP-3089.  It powers the RedARC BCDC-1225 right above it.  And you can see my kludge around the cooling problem.  Not great, but it should hold for the next 24 hours.

Tomorrow, I think we’ll call past Aspley and pick up another replacement.  I’m leery of another now, but I literally have no choice … I need it now.  Sadly, >250W 12V switchmode PSUs are somewhat rare beasts here in Brisbane.  Altronics don’t sell them that big.  The grinning glasses are no more, and I’m not risking it with the Xantrex charger again.

Long term, I’m already looking at the MeanWell SP-480-12.  This is a PSU module, and will need its own case and mains wiring… but I have no faith in the MP-3089 to not fail and cremate my home of 34 years.

The nice feature of the SP-480-12 is that it does have a remote +12V power-off feature.  Presumably I can drive this with a comparator/output MOSFET, so that when the battery voltage drops below some critical threshold, it kicks in, and when it rises above a high set-point, it drops out.  Simple control, with no MCU involved.  I don’t see a reason to get more fancy than that on the control side, anything more is a liability.

On other news, my gcc build on the TS-7670 failed … so much for the wait.  We’ll try another version and see how we go.

Solar Cluster: Resuming a build

So the house got momentarily power-cycled this morning… I’m at work, minding my own business, next thing the access point emails me this:

Mar 13 09:04:23 Syslogd start up

Now, it only does that for two reasons.  Either someone told it to reboot (not I), or it got hard reset.  Sure enough, log into the old server, and it’s reporting an uptime of 15 minutes.  I get home this evening, and clocks all around are on the blink … literally.

The cluster course is going, power outage?  What power outage?

I did consider wiring up the ADSL modem, router, study switch, and the TS-7670 up to the cluster’s power rails, but haven’t gotten around to doing that.  Alas, I’m not quite there yet.

In any case, even if the TS-7670 had been powered from the solar, I’d have still have temporarily lost the build as the HDD dock I have the hard drive sitting in is mains powered.  It also doesn’t remember its state after a power cycling.  I’d have re-started the build from work, but the HDD remained off when the power came back on.

Never mind.  The downside is now I get to re-start a multi-day build.  The good news though, is that knowing the ebuild file that Portage picked out for compiling gcc; I can resume where it left off.  In this case, it’s using an ebuild from the musl overlay; /root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-6.4.0-r1.ebuild.

ebuild /root/musl/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-6.4.0-r1.ebuild package will preserve the current working tree and will resume where it was, hopefully without incident.  I’ll be left with a .tbz2; which will be picked up when I run emerge –keep-going -ekv @system.

Solar Cluster: Bootstrapping Gentoo

Well, in my last post I discussed getting OpenADK to build a dev environment on the TS-7670.  I had gotten Gentoo’s Portage installed, and started building packages.

The original plan was to build everything into /tmp/seed, but that requires that all the dependencies are present in the chroot.  They aren’t.  In the end, I decided to go the ill-advised route of compiling Gentoo over the top of OpenADK.

This is an ugly way to do things, but it so far is bearing fruit.  Initially there were some hiccups, and I had to restore some binaries from my OpenADK build tree.  When Gentoo installed python-exec; that broke Portage and I found I had to unpack a Python 2.7 binary I had built earlier then use that to re-install Portage.  I could then continue.

Right now, it’s grinding away at gcc; which was my nemesis from the beginning.  This time though, it successfully built xgcc and xg++; which means it has compiled itself using the OpenADK-supplied gcc; and now is building itself using its self-built binaries.  I think it does two or three passes at this.

If it gets through this, there’s about 65 packages to go after that.  Mostly small ones.  I should be able to do a ROOT=/tmp/seed emerge -ek @system then tar up /tmp/seed and emerge catalyst.  I have some wrapper scripts around Catalyst that I developed back when I was responsible for doing the MIPS stages.  These have been tweaked to do musl builds, and were used to produce these x86 stages.  The same will work for ARMv5.

It might be another week of grinding away, but we should get there. 🙂

Solar Cluster: arm-unknown-linux-musleabi… saga part III

So, after a longish wait… my laptop finally coughed up an image with a C/C++ compiler and almost all the bits necessary to make Gentoo Portage tick.

Almost everything… wget built, but it segfaults on start-up.  No matter, it seems curl works.  We do have an issue though: Portage no longer supports customising the downloader like it used to, or at least I couldn’t see how to do it, it used to be settings in make.conf.

Thankfully, I know shell scripts, and can make my own wget using the working curl:

bash-4.4# cat > /usr/bin/wget
#!/bin/bash

OUT=
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    case "$1" in
        -O) OUT="$2"; shift;;
        -t) shift;;
        -T) shift;;
        --passive-ftp) : ;;
        *) break ;;
    esac
    shift
done

set -ex
curl --progress-bar -o "${OUT}" "$1"

Okay, it’s a little (a lot) braindead, but it beats downloading the lot by hand!

I was able to get Gentoo installed by hand using these instructions.  I have an old 1TB HDD plugged into a USB dock, formatted with a 10GB swap partition and the rest btrfs.  Sure, it’s only USB 2.0, but I’d sooner just put up with some CPU overhead than wear out my eMMC.

Next step; ROOT=/tmp/seed emerge -ev system

Solar Cluster: arm-unknown-linux-musleabi… a saga

So, fun and games with the TS-7670.

At present, I have it up and running:

root@ts7670:~# uname -a
Linux ts7670 4.14.15-vrt-ts7670-00031-g1a006273f907-dirty #2 Sun Jan 28 20:21:08 EST 2018 armv5tejl GNU/Linux

That’s booted up into Debian Stretch right now.  debootstrap did its deed a few days ago on the eMMC, and I was able to boot up this new image.  Today I built a new kernel, and tweaked U-Boot to boot from eMMC.

Thus now the unit can boot without any MicroSD cards fitted.

There’s a lot of bit rot to address.  U-Boot was forked from some time in 2014.  I had a crack at rebasing the code onto current U-Boot, but there’s a lot of clean-up work to do just to get it to compile.  Even the kernel needed some fixes to get the newer devicetree sources to build.

As for getting Gentoo working… I have a cross-compiling toolchain that works.  With it, I’ve been able to compile about 99% of a seed stage needed for catalyst.  The 1% that eludes me, is GCC (compiled to run on ARMv5).  GCC 4.9.4 will try to build, but fails near the end… anything newer will barf complaining that my C++ compiler is not working.  Utter bollocks, both AMD64 and ARM toolchains have working C++ compilers, just it’s looking for a binary called “g++” rather than being specific about which one.  I suspect it wants the AMD64 g++, but then if I symlink that to /usr/bin/g++, it throws in ARM CFLAGS, and AMD64 g++ barfs on those.

I’ve explored other options.  I can compile GCC by hand without C++ support, and this works, but you can’t build modern GCC without a C++ compiler … and people wonder why I don’t like C++ on embedded!

buildroot was my next thought, but as it happens, they’ve stripped out the ability to compile a native GCC on the target.

crosstool-ng is the next logical choice, but I’ll have to fiddle with settings to get the compiler to build.

I’ve also had OpenADK suggested, which may be worth a look.  Other options are OpenEmbedded/Yocto, and Cross Linux from Scratch.  I think for the latter, cross is what I’ll get, this stuff can be infuriatingly difficult.

Solar Cluster: TS-7670 showed up today

So, I now have my little battery monitoring computer.  Shipping wound up being a little more than I was expecting… about US$80… but never mind.  It’s here, arrived safely:

HTLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLFLC
>> TS-BOOTROM - built Jan 26 2017 12:29:21
>> Copyright (c) 2013, Technologic Systems
LLCLLLLLLLFLCLLJUncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel.
/ts/fastboot file present.  Booting to initramfs instead
Booted from eMMC in 3.15s
Initramfs Web Interface: http://ts7670-498476.local
Total RAM: 128MB
# exit
INIT: version 2.88 booting
[info] Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
[ ok ] Starting the hotplug events dispatcher: udevd.
[ ok ] Synthesizing the initial hotplug events...done.
[ ok ] Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...done.
[ ok ] Activating swap...done.
[....] Checking root file system...fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
/dev/mmcblk2p2: clean, 48540/117600 files, 282972/469760 blocks
done.
[ ok ] Cleaning up temporary files... /tmp /lib/init/rw.
…
ts7670-498476 login: root
Linux ts7670-498476 2.6.35.3-571-gcca29a0+ #1 PREEMPT Mon Nov 27 11:05:10 PST 2017 armv5tejl
TS Root Image 2017-11-27

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.

root@ts7670-498476:~# 

The on-board 2GB eMMC has a version of Debian Wheezy on it.  That’ll be going very soon.  For now, all I’ve done is pop the cover, shove a 8GB MicroSD card into one of the on-board slots, wired up a 12V power brick temporarily to the unit, hooked a USB cable into the console port (/dev/ttyAMA0 is wired up to an on-board CP2103 USB-serial chip) and verified that it is alive.

Next step will be to bootstrap Gentoo.  I could use standard ARMv5 stages, or I can build my own, which I might do.  I’ve done this before for mips64el n64 using glibc.  Modern glibc is a goliath on a machine with 128MB RAM though, so I’ll be looking at either µClibc/µClibc-ng or musl… most likely the latter.

That said, 20 years ago, we had the same computing power in a desktop. 🙂

I have a few options for interfacing to the power meters…

  • I²C, SPI, a number of GPIOs and a spare UART on a 2.54mm header inside the case.
  • Another spare UART on the footprint for the GPS module (which my unit does not have)
  • Two RS-232 serial ports with RTS/CTS control lines, exposed via RJ-45 jacks
  • Two CANbus ports on a single RJ-45 jack
  • RS-485 on a port marked “Modbus”

In theory, I could just skip the LPC810s and hook this up directly to the INA219Bs.  I’d have to double check what the TTL voltage is… Freescale love their 1.8V logic… but shifting that up to 3.3V or 5V is not hard.  The run is a little longer than I’m comfortable running I²C though.

The LPC810s don’t feature CANbus, so I think my original plan of doing Modbus is going to be the winner.  I can either do a single-ended UART using a resistor/diode in parallel to link RX and TX to the one UART line, or use RS-485.

I’m leaning towards the latter, if I decide to buy a little mains energy meter to monitor power, I can use the same RS-485 link to poll that.  I have some RS-485 transceivers coming for that.

For now though, I’ll at least get Debian Stretch going… this should not be difficult, as I’ll just use the images I’ve built for work to get things going.  I’m downloading a Jessie image now:

root@ts7670-498476:~# curl https://bne.vrt.com.au/technologicsys/ts7670d-jessie-4.4.1-20160226.dd.xz | xzcat | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0  113M    0  544k    0     0   114k      0  0:16:48  0:00:04  0:16:44  116k

Once that is done, I can reboot, re-format the eMMC and get debootstrap going.  I might even publish an updated image while I’m at it.