t4240QDS help

[willhampton]

I work at UAB computer Science Department as a student assistant in the IT department. One of our researchers bought a t4240qds in chassis with harddrive and loaded SD Card three years ago for network layer development via ssh. One day the t4240qds went down and the reseracher could no longer access it. By this time the person who had set up the t4240qds system was no longer with us. A grad student was set to work on the t4240qds to get it back online. He was successful only in breaking the sd card that (as far as I understand) hard the (?)operating system on it.  I think I need to build another SD Card for it. I am stuck on trying to remake the SD card as I have no experience with building linux kernels, yocto or embedded systems at all. The Beginner's Guide for the t4240qds doesn't work, as some of the links are dead and i have commented on that. Building yocto is beyond me at this point as I'm not even sure what I'm doing with this box...Please answer my noob questions about this product.

What is the environment that is accessible from another linux machine via serial connector and minicom called?

Is it possible to boot this t4240qds off the hard drive in the chassis? if so how to do that?

Is this system supposed to run off the SD Card that ships with it?

Can someone supply up to date information on how to build an image to go on an SD card that doesn't require deep knowledge of bitbake or embedded linux?

Can I order another SD Card with yocto(or whatever ships with this box) on it?

Is there an email/phone number to get support directly from NXP? I can't find one.

Thanks

[willhampton]

Thank you very much for your detailed answer! Uboot is indeed working. I am attempting to do the simplest SD Card recovery procedure.Unfortunately, I still need more information. For the rebuild SD Card procedure 

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-09A9C9B5-F47B-4FA3-912E-8...

says "Mount the target board type .iso (eg. QorIQ-SDK-<Version>-PPCE6500-<release date>-yocto.iso)".  The link for the sdk does not have any downloads in that format. the choices are:

1	Cache: QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0 PPC64E6500 Yocto	QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0 PPC64E6500 Yocto Cache.iso
1	Image: QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0 PPC64E6500 IMAGE	QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0 PPC64E6500 IMAGE.iso
1	Source: QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0	QorIQ Linux SDK v2.0 SOURCE.iso

Which is correct SDK Version is the one I need? I've downloaded them all.

The CACHE is full of sstate files and seems not right.

The Sources doesn't seems to have files for a t4240qds. It seems to have files for ls1021a-oobe only.

The IMAGE seemed promising, but failed, as there was no uImage.dtb to transfer to /dev/sdb2/boot.

The files have names like uImage-t4240qds.bin, uImage-t4240qds.dtb, uImage-t4240qds-usdpaa.dtb. I cp 'd each of those /dev/sdb2/boot as uImage.dtb. The t4240qds complained that the ftd file was not an image. I repeated this 4x, for each file that was uImage**.dtb for the same result.

Do I need to build with yocto/bitbake? Or do I have the wrong download?

Thanks

[bpe]

The *IMAGE*.iso file is the correct disc image for pre-built binaries for your board. The file names you mentioned are

soft links. Please make sure the system you mounted the ISO image on understands and correctly handles soft links

or copy the  target files by hand.

The actual files the links point to are:

uImage--4.1-r0-t4240rdb-20160515043650.bin - Linux kernel binary

uImage--4.1-r0-t4240rdb-20160515043650.dtb - Device Tree Blob binary

fsl-image-core-t4240rdb-20160515044234.rootfs.ext2.gz - Root Filesystem

Rename the first two files to uImage and uImage.dtb on your SD card correspondingly,  or adjust the u-Boot variables

to contain the actual image file  names.

Have a great day,
Platon

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[bpe]

>What is the environment that is accessible from another linux machine
>via serial connector and minicom called?
>
[Platon] Linux shell or u-Boot command line, depending on where the
boot sequence stopped. If u-Boot is broken, then none. See suggestions
for recovery at the link below:

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-6E44B664-2DFD-4695-9801-7...

>Is it possible to boot this t4240qds off the hard drive in the
>chassis? if so how to do that?
>
[Platon] Yes and no. T4240 processor cannot fetch and execute boot code
directly from the hard disk, it needs first to boot into a bootloader
from a supported boot interface. For T4240-QDS, the default boot
is from the on-board NOR flash and the bootloader is u-Boot. u-Boot,
among other options, can load and start the kernel from HDD.
Details can be found at the link below:

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-2B95CE43-65DD-4086-9B54-A...

Normally, the on-board NOR Flash carries two copies of u-Boot. Visit
the links below for details:

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-42A4F7E9-F8AC-4B95-A3E2-9...

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-3C78312B-B4AF-4A78-B229-5...
 

>Is this system supposed to run off the SD Card that ships with it?
>
[Platon] Yes.
 
>Can someone supply up to date information on how to build an image
>to go on an SD card that doesn't require deep knowledge of bitbake
>or embedded linux?
>
[Platon] The simplest SD recovery procedure can be done with pre-built
binaries, no SDK installation or bitbake is required. The only requirement
is a workable u-Boot copy in NOR Flash. See details at the link below:

https://freescale.sdlproducts.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/QorIQ_SDK/GUID-09A9C9B5-F47B-4FA3-912E-8...

Below is a link to the SDK image download page:

Linux® SDK for QorIQ Processors|NXP 

There are more complex SD boot scenarios where u-Boot is fetched directly
from the SD card programmed with a special record, however, they require
a little more knowledge about t4240 boot sequence, more tools and
preparation steps. For the board recovery purposes, I guess it is not necessary.

>Can I order another SD Card with yocto(or whatever ships with this box) on it?
>
[Platon] Discuss it with your distributor.
 
>Is there an email/phone number to get support directly from NXP? I can't find one.
>
[Platon] Consider creating a Support Case:

https://community.nxp.com/docs/DOC-329745

Have a great day,
Platon

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