3 The Buffalo Linkstation Pro/Live, codename LS-XHL and LS-CHLv2, is a single
4 disk NAS server. The PCBs of the LS-XHL and LS-CHLv2 are almost the same.
5 The LS-XHL has a faster CPU and more RAM with a wider data bus, therefore
6 the LS-XHL PCB has two SDRAM chips. Both have a Kirkwood CPU (Marvell
7 88F6281). The only on-board storage is a 4 Mbit SPI flash which stores the
8 bootloader and its environment. The linux kernel and the initial ramdisk
9 are loaded from the hard disk.
11 Important! Changes since v2019.07
12 ---------------------------------
13 In u-boot v2019.07 the driver for the SATA port was changed to a new
14 one. This means that the old "ide" command and block interface is not
15 supported anymore. More important, the boot commands have changed. You have
16 to overwrite the boot commands in your envionment with the new ones:
18 env default -f bootcmd_legacy
19 env default -f bootcmd_hdd
24 These linkstations don't have a populated serial port. There is no way to
25 access an (unmodified) board other than using the netconsole. If you want
26 to recover from a bad environment setting or an empty environment, you can
27 do this only with a working network connection.
29 Therefore, on entering the resuce mode, a random ethernet address is
30 generated if no valid address could be loaded from the environment variable
31 'ethaddr' and a DHCP request is sent. After a successful DHCP response is
32 received, the network settings are configured and the ncip is unset. Thus
33 all netconsole packets are broadcasted and you can use the netconsole to
34 access board from any host within the network segment. To determine the IP
35 address assigned to the board, you either have to sniff the traffic or
36 check the logs/leases of your DHCP server.
38 The resuce mode is selected by holding the push button for at least one
39 second, while powering-on the device. The status LED turns solid amber if
40 the resuce mode is enabled, thus providing a visual feedback.
42 Pressing the same button for at least 10 seconds on power-up will erase the
43 environment and reset the board. In this case the visual indication will
45 - blinking blue, for about one second
46 - solid amber, for about nine seconds
47 - blinking amber, until you release the button
49 This ensures, that you still can recover a device with a broken
50 environment by first erasing the environment and then entering the rescue
53 Once the rescue mode is started, use the ncb binary from the tools/
54 directory to access your board. There is a helper script named
55 'restore_env' to save your changes. It unsets all the network variables
56 which were set by the rescue mode, saves your changes and then resets the
59 The common use case for this is setting a MAC address. Let us assume you
60 have an empty environment, the board comes up with the amber LED blinking.
61 Then you enter the rescue mode, connect to the board with the ncb tool and
62 use the following commands to set your MAC address:
64 setenv ethaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
67 Of course you need to replace the 00:00:00:00:00:00 with your valid MAC
68 address, which can be found on a sticker on the bottom of your box.
74 Bootloader is running normally.
77 No ethaddr set. Use the `Rescue Mode` to set one.
80 Something bad happend during loading the operating system.
82 The default behavior of the linux kernel is to turn on the blue LED. So if
83 the blinking blue LED changes to solid blue the kernel was loaded
89 The power-on switch is a software switch. If it is not in ON position when
90 the bootloader starts, the bootloader will disable the HDD and USB power
91 and stop the fan. Then it loops until the switch is in ON position again,
92 enables the power and fan again and continue booting.
97 The environment defines several different boot sources:
100 This is the default boot source. It loads the kernel and ramdisk from the
101 attached HDD using the original filenames. The load addresses were
102 modified to support loading larger kernels. But it should behave the same
103 as the original bootloader.
106 Use this for new-style booting. Loads three files /vmlinuz, /initrd.img
107 and /dtb from the boot partition. This should work out of the box if you
108 have debian and the flash-kernel package installed.
111 Same as hdd expect, that the files are loaded from an attached USB mass
112 storage device and the filename for the device tree is kirkwood-lsxhl.dtb
113 (or kirkwood-lschlv2.dtb).
116 Same as usb expect, that the file are loaded from the network.
119 Automatically activated if the push button is pressed for at least one
120 second on power-up. Does a DHCP request and enables the network console.
121 See `Rescue Mode` for more information.
123 You can change the boot source by setting the 'bootsource' variable to the
124 corresponding value. Please note, that the restore_env script will the the
125 bootsource back to 'legacy'.
131 60000 - 6ffff reserved, may be used to store dtb
132 70000 - 7ffff u-boot environment
137 make lsxhl_config (or lschlv2_config)
143 Just flash the resulting u-boot.kwb to the beginning of the SPI flash. If
144 you already have a bootloader CLI, you can use the following commands:
147 bootp ${loadaddr} u-boot.kwb
148 sf erase 0 +${filelen}
149 sf write 0 ${fileaddr} ${filesize}