Using NARD with other boards

[Sebastián Salgado]

Hi list members,
I'm passing this privately started conversation with Ronny to the mailing
list, so everyone can participate.

I would like to use the full NARD SDK with my non RPi platform. I'm trying
to evaluate the cost of the adaptations needed to use it

This board (AT91SAM9G45 based) has MTD and an SD car slot. By now it's
booting from the internal flash. I didn't try to boot it from SD.

Can you please, make a simple list of the items I would have to patch to
use the SDK with a non RPi platform?
Then I will evaluate the work to do and maybe convince my client to migrate
to NARD.

Thanks
^Cebas


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ronny Nilsson <rln-nard at arbetsmyra.dyndns.org>
Date: Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Re: Using NARD with other boards
To: Sebastián Salgado <ssalgado at gmail.com>


Hi
If possible I prefer the mailinglist for discussions. Then others can
potentially benefit from it too.

Using the root fs only might be possible, but it will likely need quite some
work. And you will probably loose some nice to have features such as remote
upgrades and automatic allocation of SD-card free space at first boot. What
type of flash does your system have, integrated via MTD or SD-card? The root
fs is passed to the kernel at boot as an initramfs. I think U-Boot has
support for it. At startup U-Boot need to copy the initramfs image from
flash
to the upper part of RAM and then pass an address to the kernel.

/Ronny



-------------------------------------
> Hi Ronny,
> nice to meet you!
> Sorry for my mistake. Is ok to write to you to this address, or you prefer
> me to use the mailinglist?
>
> Do you think it's difficult to use it for another platform? I wanted
mostly
> to create the root fs. The bootstrap, uboot and kernel are already made
and
> don't need too much modifications.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Ronny Nilsson <
>
> rln-nard at arbetsmyra.dyndns.org> wrote:
> > Hi Cebas
> > You sent a message to the Nard mailinglist from wrong mailaccount.
> > ssalgado at gmail.com isn't subscribed and thus your message got discarded
> > (to
> > prevent spam). However, I got a copy so I can answer.
> >
> > For the time being Raspberry Pi is the only hardware supported by Nard
> > SDK. Technically other processors could perhaps be added but it's
> > unlikely to be worth the effort. Nard is pretty much tuned to the
> > Raspberry Pi system architecture (ARM cpu, boot from FAT-fs in a SD-card
> > and a bootloader).
> >
> > /Ronny
> >
> >
> > -------------------------------------
> >
> > > Hello NARDs,
> > > I'm starting to work with embedded Linux projects. I have two products
> > > in development and another planned.
> > > By now, the platform is a custom board based on AT91SAM9G45.
> > > I'm also evaluating the RPi B+ for future projects. This is how I met
> >
> > NARD.
> >
> > > I do like the NARD SDK, and I wonder if I can use it with the
> > > AT91SAM9G45 board.
> > > Does anybody had some expirience using the SDK with other platform
than
> >
> > the
> >
> > > Pi?
> > >
> > > ///Cebas