piCorePlayer = Squeezelite on Microcore linux. .An embedded OS in RAM with Squeezelit

[bpa]

castalla: All you have to do is to download this image http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/a10Core.img.gz and then unzip it (I use 7-ZIP for windows) and burn it to a SD-card using Win32Diskimager.

Then put the card in your cubieboard and connect a LAN cable and power. If you are lucky it will boot to CLI - and from there it is not difficult to install squeezelite.

The problem is that I don't now for sure that it will boot on your cubieboard, but the only way to find out is to try.

It boots OK on Cubie and works OK but screen (HDMI 720p / 60hz) is too big so not all of console is visible.

[sbp]

It boots OK on Cubie and works OK but screen (HDMI 720p / 60hz) is too big so not all of console is visible.

I saw the same problem in the microcore forum: ""The screen is a bit cut off (root@box: is cut off at ox, but that is likely a refinement in script.bin""
So is it something that you can fix by editing the script.bin? This is the link to the post: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index...c,14388.0.html

If you only want to use it as a dedicated squeezelite player, then you will not be needing the attached screen, as you will be able to manage the player from another computer via SSH using putty.

So I think that if you follow the advice in post number 4 in this thread you will be able to install Dropbear (a SSH client). After you have installed dropbear you can connect to your Cubie from another computer and then from here follow the instructions in post 1 in order to install squeezelite and ALSA on the Cubie.

[castalla]

I saw the same problem in the microcore forum: ""The screen is a bit cut off (root@box: is cut off at ox, but that is likely a refinement in script.bin""
So is it something that you can fix by editing the script.bin? This is the link to the post: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index...c,14388.0.html

If you only want to use it as a dedicated squeezelite player, then you will not be needing the attached screen, as you will be able to manage the player from another computer via SSH using putty.

So I think that if you follow the advice in post number 4 in this thread you will be able to install Dropbear (a SSH client). After you have installed dropbear you can connect to your Cubie from another computer and then from here follow the instructions in post 1 in order to install squeezelite and ALSA on the Cubie.

Mixing in with 'what do I know - nuttin' - any of this of use for fixing the screen issue?

https://www.miniand.com/forums/forums/development/topics/debian-wheezy-lxde-armhf-build

... talks about tweaks for changing resolution.

[sbp]

Hi Castalla.

I think it is a good suggestion.
I think that you should download the correct Cubieboard script from the page you provided. In this there is a script.bin file that you should use instead of the script.bin file that you got from microcore.

[castalla]

Hi Castalla.

I think it is a good suggestion.
I think that you should download the correct Cubieboard script from the page you provided. In this there is a script.bin file that you should use instead of the script.bin file that you got from microcore.

I can only do 'background' gophering at the moment ... Cubie hasn't arrived yet. There's also something on that page about bootloaders ...

We/I are in the kind hands of bpa on this at the moment.

If it works then it'd be a brilliant application for future Cubie users - another replacement for the defunct squeezebox players!

And maybe it would contribute something to the community project.

[bpa]

I used a Ubuntu system so no need for putty and tried ssh'ing into Cubie but all I got was connection refused on port 22. The IP address was 192.168.1.143 which is not part of my DHCP and so I think gateway IP address was not setup.

Second and subsequent boots of Cubie does not give a HDMI display but I have a debug cable on serial port and system still boots but config needs to be sorted out as it think only 512Mb

CPU:   SUNXI Family
Board: A10-EVB
DRAM:  512 MiB
MMC:   SUNXI SD/MMC: 0
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
reading boot.scr

256 bytes read
## Executing script at 44000000
reading script.bin

42144 bytes read
reading uImage

3287928 bytes read
reading uCore

2903510 bytes read
## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 48000000 ...
   Image Name:   Linux-3.0.39
   Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    3287864 Bytes = 3.1 MiB
   Load Address: 40008000
   Entry Point:  40008000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 43100000 ...
   Image Name:   uCore for Allwinner A10
   Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    2903446 Bytes = 2.8 MiB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
   Loading Kernel Image ... OK
OK

Starting kernel ...

<6>Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
<5>Linux version 3.0.39 (root@box) (gcc version 4.4.5 (Debian 4.4.5-8) ) #1 PREEMPT Tue Aug 21 20:03:28 UTC 2012
CPU: ARMv7 Processor [413fc082] revision 2 (ARMv7), cr=10c5387d
CPU: VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT aliasing instruction cache
Machine: sun4i
<6>Total Detected Memory: 512MB with 1 banks
<6>64 MB reserved for MALI
<6>Memory Reserved:
<6>     SYS  : 0x43000000 - 0x4300ffff  (  64 kB)
<6>     VE   : 0x44000000 - 0x48ffffff  (  80 MB)
<6>     G2D  : 0x58000000 - 0x58ffffff  (  16 MB)
<6>     LCD  : 0x5a000000 - 0x5bffffff  (  32 MB)
Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
<7>On node 0 totalpages: 114688
<7>free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat c06502c4, node_mem_map c070c000
<7>  Normal zone: 896 pages used for memmap
<7>  Normal zone: 0 pages reserved
<7>  Normal zone: 113792 pages, LIFO batch:31
<7>pcpu-alloc: s0 r0 d32768 u32768 alloc=1*32768
<7>pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 
Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 113792
<5>Kernel command line: init=/init panic=10 rootwait loglevel=3
<6>PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
<6>Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
<6>Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
<6>Memory: 448MB = 448MB total
<5>Memory: 313536k/313536k available, 145216k reserved, 0K highmem
<5>Virtual kernel memory layout:
    vector  : 0xffff0000 - 0xffff1000   (   4 kB)
    fixmap  : 0xfff00000 - 0xfffe0000   ( 896 kB)
    DMA     : 0xffc00000 - 0xffe00000   (   2 MB)
    vmalloc : 0xdc800000 - 0xf0000000   ( 312 MB)
    lowmem  : 0xc0000000 - 0xdc000000   ( 448 MB)
    pkmap   : 0xbfe00000 - 0xc0000000   (   2 MB)
    modules : 0xbf000000 - 0xbfe00000   (  14 MB)
      .init : 0xc0008000 - 0xc0030000   ( 160 kB)
      .text : 0xc0030000 - 0xc0619000   (6052 kB)
      .data : 0xc061a000 - 0xc06580b0   ( 249 kB)
       .bss : 0xc06580d4 - 0xc070bda0   ( 720 kB)

[sbp]

Thanks for the information.
I'm near the top of my knowledge here - the only thing I can add here, is to ask if you have installed dropbear on the Cubie. It is not included in the microcore image, so it needs to be installed.

EDIT - sorry missed the part about the wrong IP range:

from the readme : http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycoreli...mv7/README.txt

"Check that you network is up and that you have an IP number, type ifconfig
to verify."

But I'm sure that you can get better advise at the microcore forum for the A10 device.

[bpa]

This is just some notes on current status - not expecting any answers.

Changing the script.bin (easy just replace the file no dd necessary) file improved the display but not perfect missing 1 col on LHS.

Still cant ssh into Cubie.

Boot still has lots of error messages and also still thinks only 512Mb - I think bootloader may need to be updated to handle 1Gb Ram.

edit:

I don'rt know what a "correct" boot of microcore looks like and so do not know if Cubie boot is good or bad. Tomorrow I'll try microcore on my RaspPI and see what a good boot looks like.

[sbp]

Hi bpa.

You could try to download the image I made, this is microcore with SSH server (Dropbear) and Squeezelite, so the output to the screen will be microcore. You can get it here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...crocore-linux)

So by using this you can get an idea on the performance and how it looks on a raspberry (it is only CLI). As a bonus you will also get audio from the analog jack via squeezelite - right out of the box. There is not a graphical interface included.

If you want a graphical interface for your Cubie you will need to download packages for this - just follow the readme instuctions here: http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/README.txt

The Microcore concept is like this:
Microcore a very small CLI linux
Tinycore a microcore system with a graphical interface

[sbp]

Still cant ssh into Cubie.

.

Have you installed Dropbear?

You need also to make a password for the user, before you can log in.

[bpa]

Have you installed Dropbear?

You need also to make a password for the user, before you can log in.

No I haven't and I some time just trrying to understand how to do the install of a module (the website advice to use Appbrowser is not helpful) . The web site and documentation is not great. The suggestion that I have to bring up an x86 installation to create password for drop bear on A10 was the last straw.

I was willing to test if things were already in place but clearly they aren't. I don't have time at the moment to get to grips with Tinycore and module installation etc. - I'll come back to it on Friday. Given all the strange error message coming from the debug console during microcore boot I'd prefer to get a clean A10 boot before proceeding to install modules especially as I have already experienced some boots which do not show a HDMI display which undermines my confidence in the current build.

[sbp]

No I haven't and I some time just trrying to understand how to do the install of a module (the website advice to use Appbrowser is not helpful) . The web site and documentation is not great. The suggestion that I have to bring up an x86 installation to create password for drop bear on A10 was the last straw.

I fully understand your grief, but in order to connect you will have to install Dropbear. Here is a How-To if you want to try (it is from post no 1 and 4 in this thread). You will have to make a partition where you can save extensions, so first do something like this (this worked on a raspberry, so I cant see why it shouldn't work on a Cubie):

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
n new
p primary
2 partition number 1-4
6 first cylinder
+20M I made a 20 MB partition for this - you could choose any size you want (up to the CF-card size)
t change partition Id
........partition number - choose 2
2
83 linux file system
w to write the changes to the card

sudo reboot


Next I formated it to the ext4 format:
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2

sudo reboot


Next you will have to tell microcore to use this partition for its extensions, therefore write:
tce-setdrive

And then you choose 2= /mnt/mmcblk0p2

Next install Dropbear and make a password for user tc:

At the command promt write:
tce

s search
d Dropbear - choose the correct [number]
[number] Enter
q quit
i install


Then make a password for user tc like this:
At command promt write:
passwd 
Then write you password - twice

Then add these three lines to opt/.filetool.lst
etc/passwd
etc/shadow
etc/dropbear


Then add this line to /opt/bootlocal.sh
/usr/local/etc/init.d/dropbear start 

next backup the changes:
filetool.sh -b

Then reboot.
sudo reboot

I was willing to test if things were already in place but clearly they aren't. I don't have time at the moment to get to grips with Tinycore and module installation etc. - I'll come back to it on Friday. Given all the strange error message coming from the debug console during microcore boot I'd prefer to get a clean A10 boot before proceeding to install modules especially as I have already experienced some boots which do not show a HDMI display which undermines my confidence in the current build.

Yeap, just take your time. As I don't have a Cubie box, I can't help you with that. If you are interested I'm sure they will help you with your questions at the Alwinner A10 forum at the microcore web-page

[bpa]

I've had some success by ignoring some of the advice on microcore wiki (e.g. to install App do not use appbrowser or ab but as you said tce ). So I then got past most of the issues with the same command you have now suggested.

I got dropbear installed but not on a separate partition because of the video problem (and not fixable by script.bin) - I can't see the left hand column and so all the fdisk command don't show !! and so the dropbear does nto start on boot.

There is a problem with the microcore with Cubieboard and video doesn't show on every boot even though I think everythings else is ok (but I need a working dropbear on boot to prove it). I've had success when unit is switched off for about 30mins and then I get video on next boot.

[castalla]

I'm starting to feel awful I ever raised this!!!!

[sbp]

I don't understand how the video can be so variable, because microcore is the same every time you reboot.

The beauty of microcore is that it is unchanged from time to time. There is no writing to your SD-card, unless you do a backup. So everything is running in RAM, and every time you reboot - the original microcore is reloaded again.