HiKey960 and latest debian console question

With a fresh HiKey960, and the mezzanine, I’ve had a bit of an adventure getting debian loaded on.

While updating the firmware, I was getting Synchronous Exception at 0x0000000000000000 using the version 59 firmware that debian.org references as part of install. I tried version 85 as well which produced the same error message. I was able to get the version 85 debug version to install however.

I installed the latest debian snapshots off linaro.org, however on booting the device, minicom allows me to interact with the boatloader (ie I can scroll up and down from the choices of debian gnu/linux, advanced options etc, but choosing debian linux doesn’t result in a working console that I can input anything into. I see all the boot messages, example:

inaro-developer login: root (automatic login)

Last login: Thu Nov 3 17:16:44 UTC 2016 on ttyAMA6
Linux linaro-developer 4.19.5-hikey #26 SMP PREEMPT Sun Sep 8 01:23:41 UTC 2019 aarch64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
root@linaro-developer:~# [ 7.489428] wlcore: PHY firmware version: Rev 8.2.0.0.240
[ 7.629913] wlcore: firmware booted (Rev 8.9.0.0.76)

the system just won’t accept any input. Any ideas?

Thanks!

You can get the latest firmware here: http://snapshots.linaro.org/reference-platform/components/uefi-staging/latest/hikey960/release/

This is what linked in our documentation page for Hikey960.

Make sure you have disabled hardware/software flow control in minicom. You can still access UEFI console with flow control but not the debian shell.

Thanks,
Mani

And WHAT mezzanine would that be?

UART Serial one, sorry I wasn’t clear on that bit.

Thanks Mani! It was hardware/software flow control off that made all the difference.

FWIW the “latest” firmware is #85 which the release version is what I was having trouble installing but like I said the debug version of #85 did install and works.