[LEDE-DEV] [source] ar71xx: deactivate some boards with too small kernel partitions

[Hauke Mehrtens]

Hi Piotr,

thanks for writing this mail.

On 10/23/2017 02:41 PM, Piotr Dymacz wrote:
> Hello Hauke,
> 
> AFAIK, "{image,kernel,rootfs} is too big" errors are/were just ignored
> before. As I understand this, with such approach, we can keep support
> for device and allow users to build images with custom configuration
> (different kernel options, set of packages, etc.) which makes image
> generation possible. If you look closer at the yesterday buildbot log
> [1], this was true for (some of) below devices (grep for "WARNING.*too
> big").

As discussed in IRC, this error message complains about too big kernel
image size which is different for overall image size.

> What I don't really understand here is why disabling image generation
> only for below boards made buildbot happy again if there are many other
> which have similar issues now [2] and are just ignored. How below boards
> were selected and why image for, for example "re450", wasn't disabled if
> it also fails?
> 
> Also, please have a look at my comments inline, below.
> 
> [1]
> http://phase1.builds.lede-project.org/builders/ar71xx%2Fgeneric/builds/388/steps/images/logs/stdio
> 
> 
> [2]
> http://phase1.builds.lede-project.org/builders/ar71xx%2Fgeneric/builds/389/steps/images/logs/stdio
> 
> 
> On 22.10.2017 23:19, LEDE Commits wrote:
>> hauke pushed a commit to source.git, branch master:
>> https://git.lede-project.org/f7a6fd31539be54d14d7c52b491b40b26bf8f740
>>
>> commit f7a6fd31539be54d14d7c52b491b40b26bf8f740
>> Author: Hauke Mehrtens <hauke at hauke-m.de>
>> AuthorDate: Sun Oct 22 23:10:08 2017 +0200
>>
>>      ar71xx: deactivate some boards with too small kernel partitions
>>           This affects the following boards:
>>       * dr344
> 
> The only way to fix this one I can think about, is to change mtd order
> (use kernel/rootfs instead of rootfs/kernel). But this would break
> backward compatibility and require change of "bootcmd" variable in
> U-Boot environment _before_ upgrade to new image.
> 
>>       * archer-c58-v1
>>       * archer-c60-v1
>>       * tl-wr902ac-v1
>>       * tl-wr942n-v1
> 
> These should be easily fixable. They use TP-Link "safeloader" image type
> with kernel/rootfs order (os-image/file-system), so we can increase
> kernel partition size and reduce the rootfs.

Could you write a patch for this please, I am busy the next few days.

> 
>>       * ubnt-uap-pro
>>       * ubnt-unifi-outdoor-plus
> 
> No idea about these two.


I think we should make the images smaller by deactivating
CONFIG_KERNEL_KALLSYMS by default and using some scripts to decode the
binary only stacktraces.

In addition we should provide more space for the kernel partition.

Hauke