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0 pointslelanthran3y ago0 comments

> Also, is that mainline Linux or are we going down the hacked kernel route of the ARM boards where someone is going to have to pick through the source to get the patches otherwise it will remain on an ancient unsupported kernel?

My initial impression is that there are no binary blobs[1]. You can look at the repo it is using over here: https://github.com/milk-v/cvitek-linux-5.10

I think getting the full sources alone is sufficient. It might not be desirable for the Linux team to accept patches for every standalone piece of hardware. As long as the patches for the actual ISA are mainlined I consider that a win.

[1] Maybe there are, I didn't look too closely at the repo, but it looks to me that it's all source code.

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11 comments · 2 top-level

predictabl33y ago· 7 in thread

I own a small mountain of SBCs and I rather disagree. 5.10 is old as-is, and often times the patches aren't submitted upstream due to quality. I've made it a new rule to only buy boards where there is a recent fork of u-boot, and plans to upstream u-boot/linux patches. Life is short and I'm tired of doing work for companies pushing this stuff out. I can't back this up, but I believe mainlining prevents e-waste by keeping boards serviceable and relevant longer.

lelanthranOP3y ago

What are you making out of those boards?

After all, on an appliance with no internet access, that cannot be updated OTA, how would having updates help?

I'm thinking household appliances, factory monitoring, automotive infotainment systems, environmental control, etc.

For most embedded stuff, your choices are leave it in the field or recall.

For hobbyists, updates are important. For production it only matters if the device is internet connected.

ilyt3y ago

Ah, the obligatory "WhAt If No InTeRnet" comment that happens every time someone complains software support for board is shit.

For one, to not have to keep ancient dev environments around when you need to make small change. Also when you decide to repurpose it for something else, which is far more likely for hobbyist board like this.

> For most embedded stuff, your choices are leave it in the field or recall.

Sure if you want to get fired. "Sir, you need to pack the $200k worth, 300kg CNC and send it to us so we can upgrade your firmware".

2 more replies

viraptor3y ago

There's lots of reasons you may need updates anyway. We've seen components which die after an internal counter overflows some amount of days. (Was that SSDs?) Customers will find issues you didn't know about. You'll need to get extra metrics out of remote systems. And many others.

Shipping hardware is costly in transport and worker-hours. Being able to update things on site is way better, even if it's "put this on a USB drive, plug in, restart".

justinclift3y ago

> After all, on an appliance with no internet access ...

Just to point out, the sales page for this board says in big letters that it can do 10/100 ethernet with an add-on board.

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checkyoursudo3y ago

> What are you making out of those boards?

GP said: "a small mountain".

But I think GP does have a good point about ease of serviceability allowing for longer product life, even if it would be on something that you do not expect to require updates.

happymellon3y ago

All of things can be affected by a kernel bug though.

So my revision 1.2 of the product has an updated kernel, because it is supported, and I can do this without requiring a full rework of the hardware because it is only a software update.

Updates can be applied prior to shipping the hardware. You seem to be advocating that the hardware gets no support because you can't think how things can be updated, which is a strange position to take.

MegaDeKay3y ago

Can you recommend a couple good boards that fit this criteria?

rbanffy3y ago· 2 in thread

> It might not be desirable for the Linux team to accept patches for every standalone piece of hardware.

I believe this may warrant an “extended mainline” kernel project that has all those extra modules and that works to consolidate them into the least amount of different variants as possible, all the while providing some continuous hardware testing. It could be maintained in part by the manufacturers themselves who’d need to provide hardware and high quality code at the very least to be able to claim support from this extended mainline.

Sounds like my second business idea for the day. I’d love if someone would run with it.

londons_explore3y ago

> continuous hardware testing

I have a non-thinkpad laptop, and it seems nearly every kernel release there is some regression. Touchpad not working.. Then GPU driver not working... Then suspend to disk broken... Regressions that, for a regular non-technical user would be a big headache.

I would like to 'lend' hardware to someone to prevent this. I'd happily leave my laptop/desktop/SBC overnight compiling a kernel, rebooting into it, running tests, and hopefully finding regressions before they get into a release.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any project to make this easy. I'd like to just "apt install volunteer-my-hardware-for-overnight-testing". A few thousand people doing that would soon find issues that only affect rare hardware.

londons_explore3y ago

For this kind of testing, you frequently want a 'watchdog' - which is hardware that can auto-reboot a computer if the software locks up or malfunctions. The way it works is that software 'pets' the watchdog every few minutes, and if the software malfunctions, then it doesn't pet the watchdog, and the system gets hard reset and boots a known good kernel.

Unfortunately, while nearly all computer hardware has a watchdog, frequently the linux kernel doesn't implement support for it. That in turn means that testing buggy kernels on real hardware automatically frequently ends up with the hardware getting stuck and a human needs to reset stuff manually.

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11 comments · 2 top-level

predictabl33y ago· 7 in thread

lelanthranOP3y ago

What are you making out of those boards?

After all, on an appliance with no internet access, that cannot be updated OTA, how would having updates help?

I'm thinking household appliances, factory monitoring, automotive infotainment systems, environmental control, etc.

For most embedded stuff, your choices are leave it in the field or recall.

For hobbyists, updates are important. For production it only matters if the device is internet connected.

ilyt3y ago

Ah, the obligatory "WhAt If No InTeRnet" comment that happens every time someone complains software support for board is shit.

> For most embedded stuff, your choices are leave it in the field or recall.

Sure if you want to get fired. "Sir, you need to pack the $200k worth, 300kg CNC and send it to us so we can upgrade your firmware".

2 more replies

viraptor3y ago

Shipping hardware is costly in transport and worker-hours. Being able to update things on site is way better, even if it's "put this on a USB drive, plug in, restart".

justinclift3y ago

> After all, on an appliance with no internet access ...

Just to point out, the sales page for this board says in big letters that it can do 10/100 ethernet with an add-on board.

1 more reply

checkyoursudo3y ago

> What are you making out of those boards?

GP said: "a small mountain".

But I think GP does have a good point about ease of serviceability allowing for longer product life, even if it would be on something that you do not expect to require updates.

happymellon3y ago

All of things can be affected by a kernel bug though.

So my revision 1.2 of the product has an updated kernel, because it is supported, and I can do this without requiring a full rework of the hardware because it is only a software update.

MegaDeKay3y ago

Can you recommend a couple good boards that fit this criteria?

rbanffy3y ago· 2 in thread

> It might not be desirable for the Linux team to accept patches for every standalone piece of hardware.

Sounds like my second business idea for the day. I’d love if someone would run with it.

londons_explore3y ago

> continuous hardware testing

londons_explore3y ago

1 more reply

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