Kernel Changes (2.6.31.14.24)
- Due to GPU and IPU changes, the system now has the full 512MB of memory available with no reserved blocks for GPU (64MB) or IPU framebuffer (32MB). Total available memory is up from 407MB. Framebuffer dynamically allocates a maximum of 24MB for a 1080p display, or 4MB on Smartbook. GPU resource allocation is completely dynamic with a maximum allocation of around 128MB of system memory.
- Headless operation now works again by setting up a less restrictive dummy framebuffer (it is a real VESA/CEA standard 640x480 mode), and not trying to set modes where there was no monitor data available.
- Backlight: no longer blanks when disabling the video overlay
- HDMI: fixed mode selection on many displays. Driver renamed to 'siihdmi' so as not to conflict with Freescale's BSP driver. Lots of performance optimizations. Hotplug support. Revert to default selection of a 720p video mode rather than 1080p to improve out-of-the-box system performance.
- Kernel: wire sys_accept4 for new udev and potentially a little better system performance.
- SD: card voltage is driven at a more compatible level hopefully fixing most peoples' MicroSD cards in the battery slot on the Smartbook
- Minor debug output cleanups
- Update to BSP 11.05
- IPU: Triple buffering, lower power on screen blank, virtual screen size fixed (3x height to accomodate the triple buffer)
- GPU: MMU enabled. New microcode and better resource and power gating.
- S/PDIF, headphone and some GPIO pad control changes for better system operation
- CPU frequency operation updated
- SAHARA module now works
- IPU: Triple buffering, lower power on screen blank, virtual screen size fixed (3x height to accomodate the triple buffer)
- Linux kernel 2.6.31.14.24 (as above)
- Overrides and differences to standard Maverick:
- Override Update Manager prompt to update to Natty (fixes Maverick to Natty transition being totally unsupported and not recommended)
- Upstart script for Efika MX:
- Loads audio modules dynamically
- CPU frequency driver is disabled by default on Smarttop for better performance. Smartbook users will have it enabled for better battery life.
- eCryptfs loaded on demand
- Creates a 64MB compressed in-memory swap (ramzswap) drive. This increases CPU performance negligibly, but reduces disk access which is more expensive.
- Minor settings differences
- flash-kernel has been replaced by a stripped down "prep-kernel" script which does the same thing, but better (and only for the Efika MX)
- Override Update Manager prompt to update to Natty (fixes Maverick to Natty transition being totally unsupported and not recommended)
- Installer now no longer creates a swap partition. Please use swapfiles!
- Installer now aligns partitions to 4MB for better performance
- OEM configuration is now far more reliable (fixed in Ubuntu upstream, finally)
- Advanced, new Xorg driver utilizing the C2D API. Supports Triple buffered Xv overlay.
- Compliance fixes and optimizations for OpenGLES and EGL.
- Preparation for multimedia codec and FlashPlayer release
- PulseAudio has some known problems with CPU usage, audio may stutter
- Xorg driver has a rare issue whereby it's context gets reset, reducing overall performance
- Boot partition may eventually fill up after installing many kernel updates. Please "dpkg --purge" older kernels once you have verified the new ones are installed and working.
- SPDIF doesn't seem to be loaded for HDMI Audio-enabled displays, will be fixed in an update to imx-boot-scripts
- Recent updates to imx-lib (libvpu, libipu, and so on and so forth) may not install correctly through Update Manager due to some file conflicts.
All updated packages in the installer will be made available on the package repository shortly.
When i get to the "WARNING: CONTINUING WILL ERASE ALL USER DATA (Y/N)" message i always end up cancelling the installation and falling back to console, no matter i press y or n.
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that the keyboard is working from the console, so i don't understand what's wrong.
Anyone has been successful to install the image on a Efika MX Smarttop?
Tested on the Smartbook (not yet on the smarttop), and installation went fine. Will test the smarttop tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex, I've been able to image at least 3 smarttops and 2 smartbooks. Perhaps your image is corrupt or the card has some sort of issue? The only other known issue that isn't mentioned on the blog because it will affect like 3 people is that if you've modified your smartbook to have a 1280x720 screen, you won't get video. I'll look into it at some point, but since it's not an officially supported screen, it's a low hanging fruit compared to the other known issues. I only know of myself and one other user that have made the modification.
ReplyDeleteInstalling on the SmartTop right now. On the first tow boots the screen remained blank. I gave it another try, and finally my screen showed a nice Genesi logo. "y" was accepted, so it's in "Extracting Linux Desktop..." phase now. I used the same SD card for the SmartBook, and there I did not have such a problem.
ReplyDeleteWhen I start the smarttop, I get a blank screen. Looking at dmesg on the serial, I see:
ReplyDelete[ 2.228031] SIIHDMI: Device ID: 0xb0 (TPI revision 2.9)
[ 2.230915] SIIHDMI: hotplug: display attached, powered off
Of course, the display is there and turned on...
steev, throw me the patch for mtl017 and I'll put it in for the next update.
ReplyDeletePeter, we know, there's a weird race condition that affects a minority of monitors (we went from having 1 monitor not working in-house to 2 with the update, but several others ARE working that didn't before). Some monitors are saying, now that hotplug support is in there, that they are off which is weird.. we may be missing an interrupt.
I am refining the mode selection now. There's a default behavior for CEA monitors which we are trying to override right now (effectively making an HDMI monitor use PC modes instead of CEA modes, which will fix overscan issues by default - you can set siihdmi.useitmodes=1 to make it happen).
There'll be an August update.. and this is when the new packages will go out for everyone else who didn't reinstall.
BTW Peter does it list EDID and pick a valid mode even though the display is off?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI have installed this new release, that's fine!
ReplyDeleteOnly one thing : The MicroSD slot now work, but the SD slot now doesn't work anymore...at boot, becouse if I unsert the SD after the boot everything is ok.
Where can I find the documentation on how to (re)install a system from scratch on my smartbook?
ReplyDelete[ 17.317376] SIIHDMI: selected configuration:
ReplyDelete[ 17.317411] SIIHDMI: "640x480@59" 25.175 640 656 752 800 480 492 494 52-c
It does not seem to do so. But many releases earlier I used this LCD without any problems. Now it only works when I turn it on manually and press the source selector a couple of times. It's a 22" Samsung (B2240w).
@Mike
ReplyDeleteThe installation PDFs from http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms/efikamx/linux are basically still valid.
For re-installation from scratch, there is not that much documentation required: just dd the unpacked image on a SD card and boot with the SD card inserted. It will ask some question, install everything, finally shut down on its own.
Remove the SD, and restart the smartbook.
Worked for me this way.
@robyinno
ReplyDeleteFor me the same 32GB micro SD works fine in both slots (of course, with an adapter). I put my music collection on it, so I can easily move it among the smarttop, smartbook and laptop. So it's a slow (and cheap) one, took a couple of hours to fill it...
After using a different SD card and uncompressing the image before dd, finally got it working :)
ReplyDeleteHow do I setup my SDcard if it is bigger than the image (in my case: 8 Gb). If I understand correctly how dd works, it will completely overwrite the card, including the partition table and I wonder if that will render the upper portion of it unusable. Also, being able to stretch the last partition to use all avaliable space would be nice.
ReplyDeleteI still don't see anything near 720p video decoding. I have no idea what kind of video pipeline you use for video playback. The included movie player struggles with 360p, and didn't even have plugins for AAC or MPEG-4.
ReplyDeleteglmark2-es2 is giving a score of 12, when it previously gave a score of 124 (PandaBoard gives about 144).
My old HDMI monitor stopped working with the Smarttop. A newer Philips one does work, however.
I don't really see any improvements in my Smarttop, except with audio.
And now I just noticed that my monitor doesn't wake up after it goes inactive.
ReplyDeleteI am going back to the previous version. This update is unusable.
Well, I tried it and the upper portion of the card is simply unused. with gparted I could make a new partition in that space.
ReplyDeleteyay!
I copied the image to a 16GB micro SD card, powered down, and restarted as per the instructions, but the auto-mount and installation did not occur. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
ReplyDelete(Using gconf-editor -> apps -> nautilus -> auto-mount: on)
Disk Utility recognizes the card in both slots, but in neither case is it mounted.
I'm new at this stuff, so any help you could provide would be appreciated.
Is there a BIOS setting I need to check? How do I get at the BIOS on the smartbook anyway?
Mike
I wrote:
ReplyDelete> Disk Utility recognizes the card in both slots, but in neither case is it mounted.
But before the image was copied to the card, it had been automatically mounted. So it seems to have something to do with the effect of copying the image onto the card. Does this make sense to anyone?
At first I tried to write a 2GB sd card on Windows 7, and I got the same problem as alex.muntada. Flashing went fine and the card seemed to be all right, the card booted and all, but answering Y to the question canceled and went to shell. Then I tried flashing the card on the Efika itself, and this time I also deleted all partitions with the disk utility first. After that, I got the installer to proceed.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, no HDMI output on my Sony TV, directly nor via a Denon AV amplifier.
ReplyDeleteFrancois, the image is specifically designed to fit on 2GB SD cards; therefore to make sure it does fit on 2GB SD cards that are actually 1.9GB or 1.8GB in size (due to different mapping of reserved blocks to the NAND controller, for better reliability, speed etc. down to the manufacturer) the image is only 1.7GB in size.
ReplyDeleteThe extra space is going to waste, sure, and you can make whatever partition in there you like, but every time you re-image the card it'll trash the partition table and you will lose your "custom" partition at the end.
BTW as for all the other problems, they're fixed, we're prepping a new image for September. Sorry for the inconvenience. There is a treat included on the September card :)