Setup SheevaPlug

Initial Setup of SheevaPlug

To setup the SheevaPlug to boot from SD card, you have to change the uboot and uboot environment. This is done via a serial console connection and by a Linux PC.

1. Download Meteohub installer from here.
2. Login as user "root" on your Linux PC. If you don't have one, make use of one of the live Linux CDs that allow to use Linux right from a CD without having to install something on your hard disk. Take one of the major distributions that works well with your PC's hardware.
3. Goto to directory "/home" by giving the command

   cd /home

4. Copy downloaded installer archive "sheevaplug-installer.tgz" to directory "/home" and extract the files with command

   tar xzpf sheevaplug-installer.tgz

5. Goto to directory "sheevaplug-installer" by command

   cd sheevaplug-installer

6. Write down MAC as printed on the bottom label of the SheevaPlug (MAC has format xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx). We will need the MAC in a later step.
7. Connect ScheevaPlug to your Linux PC with USB cable (make sure the cable sits as tight as possible to he SheevaPlug as the connector is a bit too much inside the case to make a perfect fit).
8. Now power-cycle the SheevaPlug. Again look out that the USB cable does not flip out of the SheevaPlug as it does not fit well there.
9. Flash new boot loader and environment settings by command (use real MAC instead of xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx as noticed in step 6)

   ./meteoflash.sh mac xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Setup of SD card

You need a 4GB SLC SD card like Transcend TS4GSDHC150 or Integral Endurance 4GB. As you need a Linux Box for the previous step, only Linux way to write SD card is described. First step is to download the lates Meteohub SD card image for SheevaPlug from here. Unrar the file "mhplug-vxyz.rar" to get the 4GB image file "mhplug-vxyz.img". Please insert the SD card into your Linux box and check via "dmesg" what device the SD card has been mapped to. In the following example it has been mapped to "/dev/sdg"

# dmesg
...
[4249761.783380] sd 7:0:0:3: [sdg] 7744512 512-byte logical blocks: (3.96 GB/3.69 GiB)
[4249761.792619] sd 7:0:0:3: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
[4249761.806113] sd 7:0:0:3: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
[4249761.806116]  sdg: sdg1 sdg2 sdg3

We are just looking for "sdg" and are not interested in the partitions recognized on the SD card (sdg1, sdg2, sdg3). The print out above tells that "/dev/sdg" is the target device. To make sure that the device ist not mounted by some background processes you should manually unmount all partitions by "umount". In the given example this will be

umount /dev/sdg1; umount /dev/sdg2; umount /dev/sdg3

When this throws errors about not mounted file systems that is fine. Don't worry. Now it is time to bring the Meteohub image onto the SD card. In the example above this will be done by

dd if=mhplug-vxyz.img of=/dev/sdg bs=1M

Please be careful with that command. When you choose the wrong "of=" target (i.e. your system drive) this will be overwritten without further notice and you will have to restore your Linux box! As dd has to transport 4GB of data to the SD card this will take a few minutes. When finished dd will report number of written blocks. If it reports that not all blocks could be written, something is wrong with your SD card (may be less than 4GB in size?).
When "dd" has completed without error, this step is finished and you can pull the SD card from your Linux box. Insert SD card tinto the SheevaPlug and power cycle the SheevaPlug.

Start Meteohub

1. You can now reach the Meteohub system by your desktop's/laptop's browser at the emergency IP 192.168.1.77 ("http://192.168.1.77") and if you have a DHCP server in your LAN you also can find your Meteohub at the address given by the DHCP server. [b]User name is "meteohub", password is "meteohub"[/b]. To reach the emergency IP with your browser you probably have to do reconfigure the IP address of your desktop/laptop as described in #Setup of unmodified NSLU2 in your LAN (explains how to bring you desktop into the same subnet as Meteohub). Having reached the Meteohub web interface you can set the IP persistently.
2. Furthermore, the Windows tool "ipscan" (download here might be helpful to examine the IP that the router has given Meteohub via DHCP, if Meteohub is configured to make use of a dynamic IP via DHCP.
3. About a minute after reboot Meteohub signals its IP by blinking LEDs.

Read the Blinks

About one minute after starting reboot Meteohub signals its IP by LED blinking, as it has no buzzer attached. On 1st generation SheevaPlugs the blue LED is used for blinking, newer Sheevas do have a orange LED instead.

Signaling of the IP start sabout one minute after boot. Sequenze begins with LED going off, then each of the four numbers (delimited by a dot) will be signaled one by one. The dot between the numbers will be signaled by a "H" (LED shines bright). Each number is signaled by blinking digit per digit. Each digit is represented by a "M" (LED shines medium dimmed) repeated as often as the digit tells us. The zero digit is signaled by ten blinks. After having done this for all digits of all numbers of the IP, the end is signaled by LED staying off a while like it started with. When Sequenze is done, the LED is constantly turned on again.

Example: IP 192.168.10.77 Legend: M = LED medium dimmed, H = LED shines bright, _ = LED is dark

Signal:                                          Comment
___M___M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M___M_M___H               192
___M___M_M_M_M_M_M___M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M___H         168
___M___M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M_M___H                   10
___M_M_M_M_M_M_M___M_M_M_M_M_M_M___              77

When Meteohub does not have a valid IP this will be signaled with three blinks shortly following each other.