apu

5 nov 2016

motivation

a few months back i’ve replaced the odroid XU4 with this APU 2c4 board.

installing nixos

first have a look into the apu2 manual.

since there is no VGA/DVI output but only a RS232 serial interface we need to use that:

  1. serial cable

    out of simplicity i soldered one myself, the pins are:

     pin 2 to pin 3
     pin 3 to pin 2
     pin 5 to pin 5 (GND)

    i’ve been using this with a USB 2 RS232 converter

     # lsusb
     Bus 003 Device 003: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port
  2. connecting via serial console:

     picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200
  3. nixos boot cd

    download the nixos-minimal-16.03.714.69420c5-x86_64-linux.iso and use unetbootin to deploy it to an USB stick. afterwards mount the first partition of the USB-stick and append this to the syslinux.cfg file’s kernel command line:

     console=ttyS0,115200n8
  4. booting from the USB stick

    the apu 2c4 features corebios and the process is straight forward, just hit F10 and select the USB stick

  5. nixos installation

    basically follow the nixos manual

/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

# Edit this configuration file to define what should be installed on
# your system.  Help is available in the configuration.nix(5) man page
# and in the NixOS manual (accessible by running ‘nixos-help’).

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

let
  pw = import ./passwords.nix;
in
# setfacl -R -m u:joachim:rwx /backup

{
  imports =
    [ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
      ./hardware-configuration.nix
    ];

  # Use the GRUB 2 boot loader.
  boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
  boot.loader.grub.version = 2;
  # Define on which hard drive you want to install Grub.
  boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda";

  boot.kernelParams = [ "console=ttyS0,115200n8" ];

  networking = {
    hostName = "apu-nixi"; # Define your hostname.
    bridges.br0.interfaces = [ "enp1s0" "wlp4s0" ];
    firewall = {
      enable = true;
      allowPing = true;
      allowedTCPPorts = [ 22 ];
      #allowedUDPPorts = [ 5353 ];
    };

  };

  # networking.wireless.enable = true;  # Enables wireless support via wpa_supplicant.

  #Select internationalisation properties.
  i18n = {
    consoleFont = "Lat2-Terminus16";
    consoleKeyMap = "us";
    defaultLocale = "en_US.UTF-8";
  };

  security.sudo.enable = true;

  programs.zsh.enable = true;
  users.defaultUserShell = "/run/current-system/sw/bin/zsh";

  services = {
    nscd.enable = true;
    ntp.enable = true;
    klogd.enable = true;
    nixosManual.enable = false; # slows down nixos-rebuilds, also requires nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree here..?
    xserver.enable = false;

    cron = {
      enable = true;
      mailto = "js@lastlog.de";
      systemCronJobs = [
        "0 0,8,16 * * * joachim cd /backup/; ./run_backup.sh"
        #*     *     *   *    *            command to be executed
        #-     -     -   -    -
        #|     |     |   |    |
        #|     |     |   |    +----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
        #|     |     |   +------- month (1 - 12)
        #|     |     +--------- day of month (1 - 31) 
        #|     +----------- hour (0 - 23)
        #+------------- min (0 - 59)
      ]; 
    };  
  };  

  # Set your time zone.
  # time.timeZone = "Europe/Amsterdam";

  # List packages installed in system profile. To search by name, run:
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    borgbackup
    bridge-utils
    pciutils
    openssl
    ethtool
    #borg
    iotop
    cryptsetup
    parted
    pv
    tmux
    htop
    git
    dfc
    vim
    wget
    linuxPackages.cpupower
    powertop
    usbutils
    ethtool
    smartmontools
    nix-repl
    manpages
    ntfs3g
    lsof
    iptraf
    mc
    hdparm
    sdparm
    file
    dcfldd
    dhex
    inotifyTools
    nmap
    tcpdump
    silver-searcher
    #emacs
  ];

  time.timeZone = "Europe/Berlin";

  # Enable the OpenSSH daemon.
  services.openssh = {
    enable = true;
    permitRootLogin = "without-password";
  };

  systemd.services.hostapd.after = [ "sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlp4s0.device" ];

  services.hostapd = {
    enable = true;
    wpaPassphrase = pw.wpaPassphrase;
    interface = "wlp4s0";
    ssid="flux";
  };


  # Define a user account. Don't forget to set a password with ‘passwd’.
  users.extraUsers.joachim = {
    isNormalUser = true;
    uid = 1000;
  };

  # The NixOS release to be compatible with for stateful data such as databases.
  system.stateVersion = "16.09";
}

WD passport USB 3.0 bug

with a WD passport USB 3.0 disk i can’t boot the system since i hit this bug.

SeaBIOS (version ?-20160311_005214-0c3a223c2ee6)
XHCI init on dev 00:10.0: regs @ 0xfea22000, 4 ports, 32 slots, 32 byte contexts
XHCI    extcap 0x1 @ fea22500
XHCI    protocol USB  3.00, 2 ports (offset 1), def 0
XHCI    protocol USB  2.00, 2 ports (offset 3), def 10
XHCI    extcap 0xa @ fea22540
Found 2 serial ports
ATA controller 1 at 4010/4020/0 (irq 0 dev 88)
EHCI init on dev 00:13.0 (regs=0xfea25420)
ATA controller 2 at 4018/4024/0 (irq 0 dev 88)
Searching bootorder for: /pci@i0cf8/*@14,7
Searching bootorder for: /rom@img/memtest
Searching bootorder for: /rom@img/setup
ata0-0: KINGSTON SMS200S360G ATA-8 Hard-Disk (57241 MiBytes)
Searching bootorder for: /pci@i0cf8/*@11/drive@0/disk@0
XHCI port #3: 0x002202a0, powered, pls 5, speed 0 [ - ]
XHCI port #1: 0x00021203, powered, enabled, pls 0, speed 4 [Super]
Searching bootorder for: /pci@i0cf8/usb@10/storage@1/*@0/*@0,0
Searching bootorder for: /pci@i0cf8/usb@10/usb-*@1
USB MSC vendor='WD' product='My Passport 0827' rev='1012' type=0 removable=0
call16 with invalid stack
PCEngines apu2
coreboot build 20160311
4080 MB ECC DRAM

documentation

how to recover a bricked BIOS (after flashing)? on APU1 it was SPI, and there’s a header, so like wires + a ch341a should do it.

wireless

the APU i’m using also has a Mini-PCIe wireless card built and you can choose from these two cards:

the access point works nicely with my android devices as well as my linux laptops.

buy the APU

if you want to buy an APU, buy the APU bundle.

summary

the APU is runnig NixOS and is very stable and fast while using little energy. would use/buy again!

article source