Serial connection problem

[Daired]

Hi guys. My friend lent me VoCore for a few days and I wanted to change settings to AP+STA but I somehow messed it and now I'm not able to find Vocore's AP. So I decided that, I try to fix it through serial connection. I found http://vocore.io/wiki/index/id:14 so I connected it but it seems I have got a problem with my serial connection too. After I established connection between my computer and VoCore, I supposed that, there would appear "..press x ..." sentence on my screen, but nothing like that happened.

In the end of booting it writes "/sbin/askfirst: Please press Enter to activate this console.". I tried f+Enter and other combinations but no matter what I type, it gives me only this sentence again and again. I was looking for answers for a long time but I didn't find someone with the same or even a similar problem. I'm new in this stuff so it can be lame thing but I cant help myself... Please help.

I already tried PUTTY, TeraTerm (on Windows 10) and Minicom (through VirtualBox (Linux Mint)) and it gave me the same results every time.


Settings of my serial connection:
COM5
baud rate : 56700
data bits : 8
stop bits : 1
Parity : none
flow control : none

Code: Select all

[    0.400000] gpio-export gpio-export.4: 17 gpio(s) exported
[    0.420000] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 2 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
[    0.430000] 10000c00.uartlite: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x10000c00 (irq = 20, base_baud = 2500000) is a 16550A
[    0.450000] console [ttyS0] enabled
[    0.450000] console [ttyS0] enabled
[    0.470000] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[    0.470000] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[    0.490000] m25p80 spi32766.0: w25q128 (16384 Kbytes)
[    0.510000] m25p80 spi32766.0: unique id: D262481697501C21
[    0.510000] 4 ofpart partitions found on MTD device spi32766.0
[    0.530000] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi32766.0":
[    0.530000] 0x000000000000-0x000000030000 : "uboot"
[    0.550000] 0x000000030000-0x000000040000 : "uboot-env"
[    0.570000] 0x000000040000-0x000000050000 : "factory"
[    0.570000] 0x000000050000-0x000001000000 : "firmware"
[    0.600000] 0x00000015059f-0x000001000000 : "rootfs"
[    0.600000] mtd: partition "rootfs" must either start or end on erase block boundary or be smaller than an erase block -- forcing read-only
[    0.630000] mtd: device 4 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
[    0.650000] mtd: partition "rootfs_data" created automatically, ofs=0x3d0000, len=0xc30000
[    0.670000] 0x0000003d0000-0x000001000000 : "rootfs_data"
[    0.690000] eth0: done loading
[    0.690000] rt3xxx-usbphy usbphy.3: loaded
[    0.710000] rt2880_wdt 10000120.watchdog: Initialized
[    0.710000] TCP: cubic registered
[    0.730000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[    0.730000] 8021q: 802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
[    0.760000] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 31:4.
[    0.780000] Freeing unused kernel memory: 140K (802cd000 - 802f0000)
procd: Console is alive
procd: - watchdog -
[    6.610000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[    6.630000] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[    6.650000] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[    6.670000] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[    6.670000] ehci-platform: EHCI generic platform driver
[    7.090000] rt3xxx-usbphy usbphy.3: remote usb device wakeup disabled
[    7.110000] rt3xxx-usbphy usbphy.3: UTMI 16bit 30MHz
[    7.110000] ehci-platform 101c0000.ehci: EHCI Host Controller
[    7.130000] ehci-platform 101c0000.ehci: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    7.130000] ehci-platform 101c0000.ehci: irq 26, io mem 0x101c0000
[    7.180000] ehci-platform 101c0000.ehci: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    7.180000] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    7.200000] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    7.210000] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[    7.230000] ohci-platform: OHCI generic platform driver
[    7.230000] ohci-platform 101c1000.ohci: Generic Platform OHCI controller
[    7.250000] ohci-platform 101c1000.ohci: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[    7.270000] ohci-platform 101c1000.ohci: irq 26, io mem 0x101c1000
[    7.330000] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    7.350000] hub 2-0:1.0: 1 port detected
procd: - preinit -
[    8.680000] rt305x-esw 10110000.esw: link changed 0x00
[    9.020000] random: mktemp urandom read with 78 bits of entropy available
Press the [f] key and hit [enter] to enter failsafe mode
Press the [1], [2], [3] or [4] key and hit [enter] to select the debug level
jffs2 is ready
jffs2 is ready
[   12.610000] jffs2: notice: (315) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 1 of xdatum (1 unchecked, 0 orphan) and 7 of xref (0 dead, 0 orphan) found.
switching to overlay
procd: - early -
procd: - watchdog -
procd: - ubus -
procd: - init -
Please press Enter to activate this console.
procd: - init complete -

/sbin/askfirst: Please press Enter to activate this console.

/sbin/askfirst: Please press Enter to activate this console.
[   43.590000] random: nonblocking pool is initialized

/sbin/askfirst: Please press Enter to activate this console.


[Vonger]

Looks like it has already missed "press x" step when you get the log.
You can boot UART device first, then power up VoCore, then you should get full log.

Some VoCore(<5%) can not boot if UART TX(CP2102 based USB2TTL do not have such issue) is connected, to detours that you can connect UART RX only and type press x(serial no output) several times once it is power on, then connect RX press return, you will into uboot console.

Next time you make firmware, better to add vocoremon to /bin and /etc/rc.local, it will switch to AP mode once AP+STA failed.

[Daired]

Looks like it has already missed "press x" step when you get the log.
You can boot UART device first, then power up VoCore, then you should get full log.

Some VoCore(<5%) can not boot if UART TX(CP2102 based USB2TTL do not have such issue) is connected, to detours that you can connect UART RX only and type press x(serial no output) several times once it is power on, then connect RX press return, you will into uboot console.

Next time you make firmware, better to add vocoremon to /bin and /etc/rc.local, it will switch to AP mode once AP+STA failed.

Hello.
Thanks for your respond.

I have always been booting UART before VoCore and wait for few seconds, so I suppose that what I wrote up there is full log. I even tried your method but it didn't help me. If you have some other ideas, I will appreciate it.

[Vonger]

Hi, first it is 57600 baudrate
I checked your log, here is

Press the [f] key and hit [enter] to enter failsafe mode

Looks like openwrt failsafe still work, you can into that mode, call firstboot to recover vocore to factory setting.

[Daired]

Hi, first it is 57600 baudrate
I checked your log, here is

Press the [f] key and hit [enter] to enter failsafe mode

Looks like openwrt failsafe still work, you can into that mode, call firstboot to recover vocore to factory setting.

Hi, 57600 baudrate is already set.

My problem is that, it doesn't matter what will i push (even f) because after i push ENTER (return) it will write me "/sbin/askfirst: Please press Enter to activate this console." . So i don't know what to do....

[Vonger]

That is weird, check if the TX/RX connect is correct.

[Daired]

That is weird, check if the TX/RX connect is correct.

I suppose yes. Because I receive transmission, also when I write something and press Enter (return) it gives me respond , what in my opinion means that it is correctly connected.

[Daired]

The issue is still not resolved. Please help ....

[Vonger]

What did you do to it? Please give us more clue.

[noblepepper]

I just noticed that your boot log starts at

Code: Select all

[    0.400000] gpio-export gpio-export.4: 17 gpio(s) exported


which is exactly what I got when I had a bad solder joint on txd2.

For some reason das u-boot and the linux kernel in early stages has problems with such, notice the "real" uartlite driver reports starting in the next two lines.

Try carefully resoldering the uart connections. I cheat and use 60/40 solder instead of lead free since my skills aren't up to the level required for ROHS