New improved SD images (Beta testers needed!!!!)

[pgater]

Hi,

After my last post, I had WinSCP running, with a Putty terminal spawned off it. I also found and ran ran the test suite to give the board something a little more demanding to do after about an hour of running, having installed X terminal and firefox.

Temperature measured on the Zync heatsink got up to 55 degrees C and was steady (with the fans running).

With the test suite most were OK and EXIT_OK and some tests were skipped. However got through all the tests, including the selected repeated times tests and got a pass.

I was also running Firefox and downloading a copy of a zip file from Github (Contiki).

Read the post above from Mike Bell and decided to run the tests again. So repeated the experiment tonight. With the fans running went through the test suite twice with no problems.

Also running top in another terminal to see what was going on and creating a folder and unzipping my files in another window. Temperature measured is between 48 and 52 degrees C.

Took a deep breath and turned off the fans! Repeated the Epiphany tests. Got up to 57 degrees C and everything stopped, at one of the multiple tests, and connection to the terminals was lost, so the daemon had cut in and shut down the board!

Switched off. Plugged the fans back in, switched back on, logged in and restarted the Epiphany tests. Temperature now down to 41 degrees C, but got up to 46 degrees. While the tests were going on checked my files were unzipped in the other folder and had a look around with Win SCP. Also ran firefox for a short time to look at the news! Result, passed. Ran the Browndeer tests again. Passed! Board is running OK as I post this message! The last couple of runs are the most time the board has been on and run OK.

Could I make a suggestion The temperature daemon is great When it is getting to a couple of degrees to shutting the board down, could a message be sent to all active terminals saying something like 'WARNING' board running hot, close all applications as shutdown will commence'

Will continue to play with release and report anything I find. Especially now I have Contiki files to explore and play with

Regards,

Paul

[paran]

To Aolofsson:
I decided to test parallella board (zynq 7010 with a head) using latest ubuntu (Jan 2015, headless). I need some clarification on burning code on SD card. I followed instructions on SD making site, after using command df -h, I ended up with two partition of my SD card. ( I burned ubuntu on that one before using old version ubuntu June 2014). I have dev/ sdb1 (boot) and dev/sdb2 (rootfs). My question is do I unmount both or one of these and which one?

[9600]

Yes, unmount both before removing the card to insert it into the Parallella.

Regards,

Andrew

[paran]

Hello,
Here are some of my observation when running a new OS - January 2015 version - on parallella.

1) My sd card was mounted as '/dev/sdb1 boot' and '/dev/sdb2 rootfs'. I was not sure if I'm burning the image to one of these or both. Nevertheless, I unmounted both and burned the image under '/dev/sdb'. It went okay.

2) My parallella board is 7010 Zynq with head. I am running it with heat sink and medium sized fan attached sideways. The parallella board is in plexiglass housing. Laptop with Linux mint connected to router was used to communicate with parallela which is also connected to router. I used ssh to access parallella:

Good points:
a)- no problem accessing parallella using ssh.
b)- I like the name change from linaro to parallella. It helps differentiate OS I am using.
c)- I like the password but it is a little to long which I explain later.
d)- Pubuntu is fine with me. The letter P indicates to me that ubuntu was modified specifically for parallella board.
e)- I like parallella's login - it automatically opens parallella folder with parallella examples subfolder. Good way to introduce parallella.

Problems I run into:
f)- I attempted to access pubuntu windows using VNC on my laptop computer. No tightvncserver running in the background.
g)- I had to update pubuntu using 'sudo apt-get update' then 'sudo apt-get install tightvncserver'. I had to use sudo command.
h)- Then I had to run tightvncserver using ssh access.
i)- tightvncserver required maximum 8 letter password which explains point c)
j) - Successfully logged in vnc pubuntu windows but it was empty except for the following message

Xsession: unable to start x session
no '/home/parallella/.xsession file
no session managers
no window managers
no terminal emulators found
aborting.

k) in ssh session I tried to run parallella examples. Could not start them. It's definately lack of my knowledge here.
whats command should I use? I typed 'run'

Overall, it is good to start with Pubuntu that has minimum disk space. In other words, we are starting parallella board from bottom up. As we slowly go up, it makes easier to troubleshoot kinks in operating system. I like parallella name etc. I hope that my problems that are listed above will help provide either clarifications in operating Pubuntu or fix some kinks if they are present. If my lack of knowledge is indicated here, I will greatly appreciate insights.

[9600]

[jar]

Where is this thermal daemon, how do I tell what it is doing, and how do I disable it?

Long-running Epiphany jobs seem to cause the board to halt. It could be something coupled with the software stack, but the software worked on the old image. I have a suspicion it's this thermal daemon. What is it actually monitoring?

[jar]

[aolofsson]

jar,
This is great to see. Thanks for going the extra step to debug. We will add documentation (somewhere) to make this clear. Great to see the thermal daemon doing the job in the field!

Two tips:
-place the board on its side, not flat on the ground. (this will help some).
-if you are really doing heavy weight processing with the Epiphany on the board, you may still need some aggressive cooling techniques (like a BIG heatsink, coupling to a large case, or a fan).

Andreas

[paran]

Hello,
I run basic tests provided in parallella folder. The results are as follows:
folder - zynq-temp-sensors - pass
folder - mpi - pass
folder - epiphany-sdki - phase 1 - most ok
some skip
- phase 2- pass
status - pass
folder browndeer-coprthr - all lines pass except one fail
test_stdcl-ndev_float4.x_65536 16 (stddev1) fail
and at the end it shows test returned ok.
I repeated that test twice to ensure that failed line is not a temporary glitch. the same results.
I am going to return to old version ubuntu to figure out how to run parallella examples like malbrot etc on parallella with HDMI. My main objective is to start programming in java on it. Unless the above mentioned fail test makes this board useless.
Correct me if I am wrong, but all parallella examples require HDMI support?
I was unable to run/install desktop on 2015 version of pubuntu.
When powering up and shutting down parallella board , I start fan first for one minute before parallella board, and shut down parallella first and then fan after one minute. To stabilize core temperature during the boot up phase and to ensure that core temperature is low when is off. Have I done all the tests you asked?

[aolofsson]

As far as I remember, there was always one failing test on the coprthr, but I could be wrong.
If epiphany examples pass and parallella examples pass...this is a good sign...