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.
14 These linkstations don't have a populated serial port. There is no way to
15 access an (unmodified) board other than using the netconsole. If you want
16 to recover from a bad environment setting or an empty environment, you can
17 do this only with a working network connection.
19 Therefore, on entering the resuce mode, a random ethernet address is
20 generated if no valid address could be loaded from the environment variable
21 'ethaddr' and a DHCP request is sent. After a successful DHCP response is
22 received, the network settings are configured and the ncip is unset. Thus
23 all netconsole packets are broadcasted and you can use the netconsole to
24 access board from any host within the network segment. To determine the IP
25 address assigned to the board, you either have to sniff the traffic or
26 check the logs/leases of your DHCP server.
28 The resuce mode is selected by holding the push button for at least one
29 second, while powering-on the device. The status LED turns solid amber if
30 the resuce mode is enabled, thus providing a visual feedback.
32 Pressing the same button for at least 10 seconds on power-up will erase the
33 environment and reset the board. In this case the visual indication will
35 - blinking blue, for about one second
36 - solid amber, for about nine seconds
37 - blinking amber, until you release the button
39 This ensures, that you still can recover a device with a broken
40 environment by first erasing the environment and then entering the rescue
43 Once the rescue mode is started, use the ncb binary from the tools/
44 directory to access your board. There is a helper script named
45 'restore_env' to save your changes. It unsets all the network variables
46 which were set by the rescue mode, saves your changes and then resets the
49 The common use case for this is setting a MAC address. Let us assume you
50 have an empty environment, the board comes up with the amber LED blinking.
51 Then you enter the rescue mode, connect to the board with the ncb tool and
52 use the following commands to set your MAC address:
54 setenv ethaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
57 Of course you need to replace the 00:00:00:00:00:00 with your valid MAC
58 address, which can be found on a sticker on the bottom of your box.
64 Bootloader is running normally.
67 No ethaddr set. Use the `Rescue Mode` to set one.
70 Something bad happend during loading the operating system.
72 The default behavior of the linux kernel is to turn on the blue LED. So if
73 the blinking blue LED changes to solid blue the kernel was loaded
79 The power-on switch is a software switch. If it is not in ON position when
80 the bootloader starts, the bootloader will disable the HDD and USB power
81 and stop the fan. Then it loops until the switch is in ON position again,
82 enables the power and fan again and continue booting.
87 The environment defines several different boot sources:
90 This is the default boot source. It loads the kernel and ramdisk from the
91 attached HDD using the original filenames. The load addresses were
92 modified to support loading larger kernels. But it should behave the same
93 as the original bootloader.
96 Use this for new-style booting. Loads three files /vmlinuz, /initrd.img
97 and /dtb from the boot partition. This should work out of the box if you
98 have debian and the flash-kernel package installed.
101 Same as hdd expect, that the files are loaded from an attached USB mass
102 storage device and the filename for the device tree is kirkwood-lsxhl.dtb
103 (or kirkwood-lschlv2.dtb).
106 Same as usb expect, that the file are loaded from the network.
109 Automatically activated if the push button is pressed for at least one
110 second on power-up. Does a DHCP request and enables the network console.
111 See `Rescue Mode` for more information.
113 You can change the boot source by setting the 'bootsource' variable to the
114 corresponding value. Please note, that the restore_env script will the the
115 bootsource back to 'legacy'.
121 60000 - 6ffff reserved, may be used to store dtb
122 70000 - 7ffff u-boot environment
127 make lsxhl_config (or lschlv2_config)
133 Just flash the resulting u-boot.kwb to the beginning of the SPI flash. If
134 you already have a bootloader CLI, you can use the following commands:
137 bootp ${loadaddr} u-boot.kwb
138 sf erase 0 +${filelen}
139 sf write 0 ${fileaddr} ${filesize}