767499 - (track-armv6-testing) Beagle Board Arm v6 Support Tracking

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Release Engineering :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[cmtalbert]

Attachment: Logcat of agent start, fennec start + page loads, and stock browser start

So I have a beagle board up and running, though not at all what you'd call stable.

I used the beagleboard-xm build from this page:
* http://software-dl.ti.com/dsps/dsps_public_sw/sdo_tii/TI_Android_DevKit/TI_Android_GingerBread_2_3_4_DevKit_2_1/index_FDS.html
And Instructions from this page:
* http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/TI-Android-GingerBread-2.3.4-DevKit-2.1_UserGuide

The board boots android using the class 4 mini sdcard it came with. It is dog slow.  There are lots of issues.  We can file tracking bugs for these as needed, but I think that we can start here with a list and work through them.

= Board Level Issues =
* MAC address is recomputed on each boot - I think we stop worrying about this issue
* The screen flickers a lot. Not sure if this is a driver problem or what.
* The board is VERY slow. A faster sdcard might help, and would be worth investigating.

= Software Issues =
* Using ARMv6 builds from: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/tinderbox-builds/mozilla-central-android-armv6/1340381594/
* The ARMv6 SUTAgent crashes on startup
* The ARMv6 Fennec starts, but cannot load any web pages (reports that it cannot access the network, although I can ping sites from an adb shell instance on the device).
* The android stock browser on the board crashes on startup.

This looks to me like we have a couple of potential issues here:
* The board's build/drivers does not appear to be stable. I might try some other pre-built images to see if I can get a more stable one.
* A faster Sdcard might make things more stable as well

As far as fennec/agent stuff is concerned, I'd like to try running Fennec and the agent on another armv6 device and see if the builds are broken or if we are hitting OS instability.  I looked through logcat (attached) and didn't see any smoking guns -- looks like things are timing out.

Comment 2

[cmtalbert]

Tried getting linaro build up and running from here: https://android-build.linaro.org/jenkins/job/linaro-android_beagle-11.11-release/lastStableBuild/

I couldn't get adb working with that build, and I couldn't get the default browser to run. Howver, I plugged in my old build that I had first tested in comment 0 and I don't have adb working on it anymore either. So, that makes me think adb is just flaky on these boards. Perhaps after a few more iterations I will get adb working.

At the moment, the linaro build doesn't have the screen flicker, but the stock browser still crashes on startup. I haven't yet been able to determine what the mac address is and if it is changing in the linaro build because adb hasn't been working with it. Also, the home screen on the linaro build is blank so I can't check any settings. It's very odd.

Comment 3

[Joel Maher ( :jmaher ) (UTC -8)]

beagle boards are not armv6, I am going to resolve this as wontfix and when we find a hardware reference board that meets our low end specs we can file bugs to track that.

Comment 4

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

Raspberry Pi maybe? 700MHz ARMv6, 256MB RAM, and very inexpensive :)

Seems like many people are coming up with Android ports for it (And looks like Oleg has a ton of experience with it; he's been working on a b2g port for the board).

Comment 5

[Oleg Romashin (:romaxa)]

yep, rasperryPi very interesting option for armv6 testing. really low end and cheap.
Also I have minimal patch queue for to make it running there
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/a8HAanSlXes[1-25]

Comment 6

[Oleg Romashin (:romaxa)]

Small problem is that I haven't seen android ported for rasppi, maybe I miss something

Comment 7

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Supposedly there's work in progress to port ICS:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1700

Comment 8

[John O'Duinn [:joduinn] (please use "needinfo?" flag)]

One competitor to raspberrypi is apc.io. We just got some apc.io boards inhouse for eval, for details see bug#784250.

Comment 9

[cmtalbert]

(In reply to Ted Mielczarek [:ted] from comment #7)
> Supposedly there's work in progress to port ICS:
> http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1700

Yeah, but the problem with that is that most of the consumer base we hope to target with ARMv6 devices are on Android 2.3, so I'd rather test there, and so the apc.io is a better fit, but I would like to use the raspberry pi devices at some point to test our stability with only 256 mb of memory on board. However, I don't think it's worthwhile to rack those in automation for that testing.

Comment 10

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Sounds like the apc.io board is a better fit since it already ships with Android 2.3 then.