[Elphel-support] camera bricked after re-flashing to elphel353-8.0.9 :(

[Ákos Maróy]

Andrey et al,

Hurray, I managed to re-flash the camera.

Points to take home:

- the Atheros AR8131 ethernet card really sucks, including the atl1c
kernel module. this is why I was not seing the packets correctly. if you
can allow yourself, don't buy a laptop with this ethernet card.


- the nfs share for the images cannot be of any form. for example, it
cannot be simply: 192.168.0.20:/nfs , because it will want to mount
192.168.0.20:/ , so that it can create 192.168.0.20:/logs .

thus, the images have to be in a subdirectory in the nfs share,
something like:

192.168.0.20:/nfs/images

and then 192.168.0.20:/nfs has to be exported, so that
192.168.0.20:/nfs/logs can be created by the firmware upgrade process

I don't believe this peculiar directory structure is documented
anywhere, and one would assume that one just puts the image files into a
shared's root, like into 192.168.0.20:/nfs , then all should be OK. well
this will not work. the only way to find out is to sniff the packets,
and see the NFS connect reject for 192.168.0.20:/ - which is not
exported, naturally


- the web-based firmware upgrade simply doesn't work, as it is not
finding the files.

for example, now I the image files under 192.168.0.20:/nfs/images :

$ ls /nfs/images/ | more
kimage
list
MD5SUM
nfs_flashitall
nfs_update
part0.img
part1.img
part2.img
part3.img
partitions.conf


and if I enter 192.168.0.20:/nfs/images into the web form, it just won't
find the files when I click on 'Check NFS':
Test if the NFS share can be mounted and if all expected files are there.
 NFS connection validated


Files:
 kimage not found!
 list not found!
 MD5SUM not found!
 nfs_flashitall not found!
 nfs_update not found!
 part0.img not found!
 part1.img not found!
 part2.img not found!
 part3.img not found!
 partitions. not found!


so this is clearly broken.


- the nfs_update script will execute the flash clear even if it is
unable to flash the device with the new firmware. this is even it can
run the md5sum check on the files. (this is how I bricked my camera). I
believe this could also be improved, that it will not attempt to clear
if it cannot flash afterwards.



Akos