Post by jnc100 on Sept 3, 2010 18:43:31 GMT 7
I thought I would share my experiences of installing Debian on a N5500.
Essentially the N5500 is a standard x86 PC with a Celeron processor, intel ICH7 north + south bridges, twin intel e1000 gigabit ethernet adapters, 2x primary master/slave ide hard drives (actually the DOM flash) hooked up to a 44 pin ide connector on the board - plugged into the ICH7, 2x silicon image SiI3132 sata controllers, and an atmel atmega 168v microprocessor connected to various pins on the ICH7 and also via /dev/ttyS1 which controls the front panel LCD.
Steps:
1) back up all data on your raid. In my experience the raid transferred with all data intact with no problems but I cannot guarantee this.
2) back up the DOM. I used an inexpensive external USB <-> 44 pin IDE box to do this and dd to extract the entire filesystem.
3) decide where to install debian - you can use the provided flash but its probably a bit small. I obtained a 32GB transcend SSD device with a 44pin input, which perfectly mounts within the case on top of the hard drive bays. There are even 4 holes drilled there which are set out perfectly for a 2.5" drive. Connect up to the motherboard header with a 44pin IDE cable - difficult to get hold of - mine came from memoryc.com.
4) install debian on another computer - i used the latest squeeze alpha i386 netinstall CD with the SSD hooked up via the external USB box. If you use LVM then the system will find the root filesystem without problems despite the fact that you will be running it from a different adapter to which you installed it on. Install the ssh server task.
Issues - for some reason the ethernet adapters are eth1 and eth2 (not eth0). You need to edit the /etc/interfaces file to contain something like:
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp
before trying to boot your new system to allow it to detect the network and be able to ssh in.
If you continue to have problems accessing the system via ssh you can use a vga monitor and usb keyboard. I took an old vga cable, cut the outer shield off a male end and hold it in the vga header towards the back of the board - if you hold it in the right place it works as a temporary measure. Otherwise you can solder a pcb-mount vga header in if you can find one (I couldn't).
If debian boots correctly you can then ssh into it and install anything else you need via aptitude.
The leds are in an unconfigured state at present. There is an open source driver for the ich4 on the n5200 but I couldn't find one for the ich7 on the n5500 so have written one and attached it to this thread.
Essentially what you need is a compilation environment:
'apt-get install binutils gcc linux-headers make'
then unzip the tarball and run:
make modules
make modules_install
make install
and add the following to your /etc/rc.local:
/sbin/modprobe ich7_gpio
/usr/local/ich7_gpio/sbin/scripts/init_n5500_leds.sh
and on next startup the orange 'system_led' will turn off when the system is ready and you will have new leds under /sys/class/leds
LCD display:
work in progress.
essentially you write packets to the /dev/ttyS1 interface. From some debugging, the packets consist of the following bytes in sequence:
0x02 0x01 0xaa 0xbb message 0x03
where all messages start 0x02 0x01 and end 0x03, the message length is contained in 0xaa, 0xbb in big-endian (e.g. a two byte message is represented as 0x00 0x02), the message is what to send: display string messages seem to be 0x21 followed by the string which is null terminated. Unfortunately despite seeing what the thecus tools send to the lcd, making my own messages doesn't seem reliable (yet).
Regards,
John.
Essentially the N5500 is a standard x86 PC with a Celeron processor, intel ICH7 north + south bridges, twin intel e1000 gigabit ethernet adapters, 2x primary master/slave ide hard drives (actually the DOM flash) hooked up to a 44 pin ide connector on the board - plugged into the ICH7, 2x silicon image SiI3132 sata controllers, and an atmel atmega 168v microprocessor connected to various pins on the ICH7 and also via /dev/ttyS1 which controls the front panel LCD.
Steps:
1) back up all data on your raid. In my experience the raid transferred with all data intact with no problems but I cannot guarantee this.
2) back up the DOM. I used an inexpensive external USB <-> 44 pin IDE box to do this and dd to extract the entire filesystem.
3) decide where to install debian - you can use the provided flash but its probably a bit small. I obtained a 32GB transcend SSD device with a 44pin input, which perfectly mounts within the case on top of the hard drive bays. There are even 4 holes drilled there which are set out perfectly for a 2.5" drive. Connect up to the motherboard header with a 44pin IDE cable - difficult to get hold of - mine came from memoryc.com.
4) install debian on another computer - i used the latest squeeze alpha i386 netinstall CD with the SSD hooked up via the external USB box. If you use LVM then the system will find the root filesystem without problems despite the fact that you will be running it from a different adapter to which you installed it on. Install the ssh server task.
Issues - for some reason the ethernet adapters are eth1 and eth2 (not eth0). You need to edit the /etc/interfaces file to contain something like:
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp
before trying to boot your new system to allow it to detect the network and be able to ssh in.
If you continue to have problems accessing the system via ssh you can use a vga monitor and usb keyboard. I took an old vga cable, cut the outer shield off a male end and hold it in the vga header towards the back of the board - if you hold it in the right place it works as a temporary measure. Otherwise you can solder a pcb-mount vga header in if you can find one (I couldn't).
If debian boots correctly you can then ssh into it and install anything else you need via aptitude.
The leds are in an unconfigured state at present. There is an open source driver for the ich4 on the n5200 but I couldn't find one for the ich7 on the n5500 so have written one and attached it to this thread.
Essentially what you need is a compilation environment:
'apt-get install binutils gcc linux-headers make'
then unzip the tarball and run:
make modules
make modules_install
make install
and add the following to your /etc/rc.local:
/sbin/modprobe ich7_gpio
/usr/local/ich7_gpio/sbin/scripts/init_n5500_leds.sh
and on next startup the orange 'system_led' will turn off when the system is ready and you will have new leds under /sys/class/leds
LCD display:
work in progress.
essentially you write packets to the /dev/ttyS1 interface. From some debugging, the packets consist of the following bytes in sequence:
0x02 0x01 0xaa 0xbb message 0x03
where all messages start 0x02 0x01 and end 0x03, the message length is contained in 0xaa, 0xbb in big-endian (e.g. a two byte message is represented as 0x00 0x02), the message is what to send: display string messages seem to be 0x21 followed by the string which is null terminated. Unfortunately despite seeing what the thecus tools send to the lcd, making my own messages doesn't seem reliable (yet).
Regards,
John.