Installation of Rootfs Debian-5.13.8-mvebu-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi on WD EX2 Ultra (2 replies)

Hi all,

I am trying to install Rootfs Debian-5.13.8-mvebu-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi on my WD My Cloud Ex2 Ultra, but failed to do so yet. Short summary of what I did:

• Soldered wires to the onboard UART so I have terminal access via a USB to UART converter and minicom.
• Upgraded stock WD OS3 to OS5 (Maybe nog a very good idea in hindsight..)
• Upgraded uboot using instructions and image from CyberPK https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,28939,98649#msg-98649.
• After the uboot upgrade I set and saved the instructions to boot from USB (mentioned in the same post as above).
• Then I made the uImage, uInitrd and rootfs according to the instructions from Bodhi from 28 sept 2021 https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,32146
• I copied those on a USB drive (ext3 formatted), plugged it in the WD EX2 Ultra and booted. The boot process finds the USB storage device and then hangs after the message 'Loading image...'.
• I retried the process with a FAT32 formatted USB drive for the uImage and uInitrd. That enables both of them to load (after changing the FW params to use fatload instead of ext2load), but the boot process then hangs. Similar behaviour is described by vzhilov in this post. That thread does not end with a solution for this problem unfortunately.
• Something else which is odd is that at the u-boot prompt the ext2*-commands to interact with a ext2/3 USB drive also result in a hanging device. I mean ext2load and ext2ls. fatload and fatls do work with the same USB drive (but then reformatted as FAT32 off-course).

Vzhilov suggests this hanging behaviour might have something to do with the upgrade of stock WD OS3 to OS5.

I am thinking to use the most recent GPL sources from WD to build a new uboot.bin and see if that helps, at least for reading ext2 USB drives. After that I will try to patch those uboot sources to enable booting Debian. Any ideas to help are welcome.