When
unbricking (using recovery image) goes wrong (UM3/S3/S5 unbricking)
(updated 3/25/2022)
Disclaimer 1: Opening
the bottom of the Ultimaker S5 R1 can cause death! There
are high voltages under the cover. Read all the cautions in your
reseller's unbricking procedure before opening the cover on an S5 R1.
Disclaimer 2: Some of the unbricking steps below can in theory damage
your Olimex board on your S5. Don't hold me responsible for any
damage you may cause by following my instructions. I do not work
for Ultimaker.
-gr5
If your UM3/S3/S5 won't boot
there is something called a "recovery image". The basic procedure
is to download the ".img" file and "copy" it onto a uSD card
using special software (don't just copy the img file - you use a
special program - different depending on linux, mac, or pc). To
get the full procedure and file to download, contact your
reseller. There is some information about this here but you need
to contact your reseller to get the donwloadable image and if you have
an S5 R1 there are deadly voltages involved and you have to sign a waiver
or something:
https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/20024-recovering-a-bricked-um3/
Note that Olimex suggests you use a 4GB class
10 (or better) uSD card. If you get too large (UM says >
32GB ) it won't be recognized by the Olimex board.
However this is about what happens if
that doesn't work.
Note that UM3 and S5R1 have the olimex board. S5R2 does not!?
The Olimex hardware for UM3 and S5R1 is identical but there is a
critical change to an eeprom. More on this below under "buy the
olimex".
I know of at least 3 things that
can go wrong. I've helped 3 people fix their S5's so this will be
S5 oriented but the help below is useful for UM3/S3/S5.
Update - if you have an Ultimaker 3
it's probably a bad block and several people had great luck by first
installing version 4.3.3 recovery image which worked followed by the
latest firmware recovery image (today it is 5.3.0). It looks like
4.3.3 formats the partitions but 5.3.0 doesn't so installing 4.3.3
first seems to fix the bad blocks so then you can install 5.3.0. Latest UM3 firmware is here:
https://support.makerbot.com/s/article/1877624822572
UM3 (not S3/S5/S7) v4.3.3 firmware is here:
https://software.ultimaker.com/jedi/releases/UM3_recovery-3.7.7.20170627.img
I also have a backup copy here:
http://gr5.org/UM3_recovery-3.7.7.20170627.img
1) boot.scr
file not found in the recovery image.
Some S5 printers for sure expect
a file called boot.scr on the boot partition of the uSD yet instead UM
only supplies a file called mmc_boot.scr in some recovery images. One solution is to
mount the uSD, copy boot.scr to mmc_boot.scr and save/unmount the
uSD. This is complicated. Another solution is to talk to
U-Boot on the Olimex board and tell it to boot from mmc_boot.scr
instead. This is also complicated and requires an Olimex serial
cable.
Actually I have since learned that the 5.7.2 and 6.4.1 recovery are missing
this file but other versions e.g. 5.2.11 and 6.1.1(R1) have both .scr
files. So maybe just try a different .img file.
For the older, more complicated solution go here.
2) flash
memory on Olimex has some bad blocks
The eMMC flash memory that is
built into the Olimex board can go bad but it usually only goes bad in
a few spots. It is supposed to do wear balancing but that doesn't
seem to work well. Usually you can just reformat - or even
repartition and reformat and that always seems to fix the problem (at
least for another few years). This requires the Olimex serial
cable as well.
To figure out if the problem is
1 or 2 above you need the olimex serial cable so the first thing you
need to do is spend the 10 euros/dollars or so to get this part.
3) Motion Controller
If you get the message "The motion controller failed to update" you
should reseat or better buy a new ribbon cable that goes between the 2
computers (olimex and arduino). You can get one from amazon here for $7.
Olimex Serial Cable F
This is crucial for debugging and repairing your problem. It's
cheap and can save you hundreds of euros/dollars. If you are in
the USA you can get this from digikey.com or from my store at
thegr5store.com. If you are in europe I recommend you get it from
olimex.com. Just google "olimex serial cable F". The "F"
stands for female as you will be connecting to 3 male pins that stick
out of the olimex board (or in the case of the S5 - they are right next
to the olimex board).
For breveity I will now call it the "olimex cable".
This cable connects into your printer on one end (inside the printer -
you have to remove covers) and has a USB connection on the other end
which connects to your linux/mac/pc computer. You start up
software that gives you a command line terminal connection into your
olimex board. When you power up your printer the olimex board
will start spewing out boot information in text format. From that
information you can discover a lot of things. However you need a
device driver for the olimex cable (which has it's own tiny tiny
computer chip inside the usb connector) and you will need terminal
software. For mac/linux you can use software called "screen"
although on the mac I recommend "picocom". To find the drivers
you need (if any) and software you need google one of these or
similar. There's lots of great info out there on how to set up
the software
"olimex serial cable on a mac"
"olimex serial cable on a pc"
"olimex serial cable on linux"
On the Olimex web page where you purchase the cable there are also
helpful instructions - connect Rx to Tx (what! yes -
counterintuitive). Here's a photo of where you connect the cable
on the S5
Again Rx goes to Tx (counterintuitive). Colors of cables are
described on olimex.com website where you buy the cable.
Using the cable
Hook up the cable to the S5, connect USB, startup the appropriate
software and most importantly set the baudrate to 115200 as described
on the olimex website and other helpful forums on olimex recovery.
DEADLY
VOLTAGES IN S5 R1. Make sure no pets nor people can get
near the bottom of the printer before you apply power. Maybe face
the bottom of the printer towards/touching a wall anytime you power up
your S5.
Then power up your printer and watch the text flyby. If you get
something like this:
USB
device 0: unknown device
ethernet@01c50000
Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete......... TIMEOUT !
ethernet@01c50000:
No link.
missing
environment variable: pxeuuid
missing
environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving
file: pxelinux.cfg/01-cc-bd-d3-00-6d-10
ethernet@01c50000
Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete......... TIMEOUT !
ethernet@01c50000:
No link.
missing
environment variable: bootfile
Retrieving
file: pxelinux.cfg/00000000
ethernet@01c50000
Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete......... TIMEOUT !
Issue #2 - However if you have errors with your flash you will get
something more like this:
These are not errors - this is
just normal boot but very different from the boot.scr issue:
[ 2.064188] usb
usb5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[ 2.071432] usb
usb5: Product: MUSB HDRC host driver
[ 2.076400] usb
usb5: Manufacturer: Linux 4.14.32-ultimaker musb-hcd
[ 2.082768] usb
usb5: SerialNumber: musb-hdrc.1.auto
[ 2.088407] hub
5-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 2.092236] hub
5-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[ 2.096815]
sunxi-rtc 1c20d00.rtc: setting system clock to 1970-01-01 00:28:21 UTC
(1701)
[ 2.105522]
vcc3v0: disabling
[ 2.108564]
vcc5v0: disabling
Note the number in the brackets [] is the time in seconds since boot
started so these for example are 2 seconds after jessie operating
system started booting.
And sprinkled in there an error "mounting" or other "f2fs" errors like
these perhaps:
[ 13.702851] F2FS-fs (mmcblk1p2): invalid crc_offset: 64527
[ 13.708814] F2FS-fs (mmcblk1p2): invalid crc_offset: 64527
Error: unable to mount '/dev/mmcblk1p2'.
Note that in the above example it got serious errors when it tried to
mount "mmcblk1p2".
mmc can be either uSD or internal "hard drive" of the olimex which is
flash memory. If you are booting from uSD (you are) then
blk0 = uSD
blk1 = flash memory
If you are getting errors on mmcblk0 then something is wrong with your SD card - recreate it or throw it away and get a new one.
It's okay to wipe out all the flash memory because the uSD has all the
files needed to replace it.
The uSD has 2 partitions - the first partition is the boot partition.
flash memory has 3 partitions. In the above example it is getting
errors mounting the second partition. You can easily get
errors when copying data into the partition (sometimes mount works but
copying files fails). You can also get errors when
mounting. So anyway the 3 partitions for your olimex flash drive
are:
mmcblk1p1 (boot)
mmcblk1p2 (jessie linux and ultimaker software)
mmcblk1p3 ("user" partition - not much stored here - gcode files go
here if you print over network)
If installation fails the output should show a frowny face ultimaker
robot and above that there is some restoration going on and above that
is the key error that caused the install to fail. And then the
install ends with the # prompt:
#
If you are asked for username
password note that all Ultimaker images are root/ultimaker for
username/password. Olimex images (images you downloaded that were
created by olimex - this is talked about below) are root/olimex or
sometimes root/password.
At that prompt you can type all kinds of linux commands.
For example you can display all the "disks" on uSD and on flash:
/tmp # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15 GB,
15931539456 bytes, 31116288 sectors
486192 cylinders, 4 heads, 16
sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512
bytes
Device
Boot StartCHS
EndCHS
StartLBA EndLBA Sectors
Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1
0,32,33
4,52,48
2048 67583
65536 32.0M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2
4,52,49
22,15,19
67584 354393
286810 140M 83 Linux
Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 3688 MB,
3867148288 bytes, 7553024 sectors
118016 cylinders, 4 heads, 16
sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512
bytes
Device
Boot StartCHS
EndCHS
StartLBA EndLBA Sectors
Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk1p1
32,0,1
1023,3,16
2048 67583
65536 32.0M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p2
1023,3,16
1023,3,16
67584 1998847 1931264 943M 83
Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3
1023,3,16 1023,3,16
1998848 7553023 5554176 2712M 83
Linux
Disk /dev/mmcblk1boot1: 16 MB,
16777216 bytes, 32768 sectors
512 cylinders, 4 heads, 16
sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512
bytes
Notice that it shows you "blk0" which is uSD "disks" and notice that
the first partition on both devices is smallish (both 32MB).
Those are the boot partitions for uSD and flash. Note that the
flash has 3 partitions (p1,p2,p3). Note the sizes. Take
notes - grab a screenshot - the sizes may differ if you don't have an
S5R1 with version 5.7.2. You may have an S3 or UM3 or it's
possible a future version of UM software will create a larger second
partition to store more software. You need to save these
partition sizes because you may need to delete them and recreate them
later.
For example you can try to mount a partition but first create a folder:
# mkdir xx <-- mkdir="make directory" (create a subfolder)
called "xx" (if this gets an error you already created xx so don't
worry)
# mount /dev/mmcblk1p1 xx
That tries to mount partition 1 (p1).
How to reformat a partition.
Critical Background Information
Why we repartition - eMMC "hard
drive" chip on the olimex has "wear leveling". Each memory location can
only be written maybe 100K times which is not nearly enough for a few
locations (some processes write to the same memory location every few
seconds 24/7). So "wear leveling" fixes this. When you write to a
particular address the eMMC chip internally actually writes somewhere
else and has a map called the LBA that keeps track of where things really
are. If the failure is in the formatting portion of the eMMC or
if the failure is in the partitioning part of the eMMC you need to
recreate that. The eMMC should notice bad blocks and designate
that those parts of memory should never be used in the future but until
you rewrite a new partition or format data it will be a serious error
on the "hard drive". The strange thing
is that some people have repartitioned and reformatted 3 times and
installed the recovery image and every time it got serious errors but
when they repartitioned in such a way as to skip the first GB of "hard
drive" things worked great and their printer worked great going
forwards. Unfortunately version 5.X and newer repartition back to
the way it was.
Okay so things have changed. The newer img (recovery image) and
swu (software update - file you put on the USB flash) now will reformat
if you change the partition sizes in any way. Starting with
version 5.X if you change the partition locations or sizes the
installer will repartition the eMMC "hard drive". This may be
okay as the wear leveling is supposed to find and stop using bad blocks
each time you try to write to one. So some versioning info:
https://support.ultimaker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012055979-Ultimaker-S-line-firmware-release-notes
4.3.3 On the plus side, it does not partition. Does not
format. And it works great. I used this version for
probably a year of printing. On the minus side it does not
support digital factory, air manager, material station. So you
can't print over the network unless you use an ancient version of
Cura. But I just print using USB flash anyway.
5.1.18 and older don't know how to use .swu files so you have to
install the "stepping stone" firmware first if you are installing
ujsing USB (unbricking "recovery image" method uses ".img" file and
doesn't need the "stepping stone" firmware installed first).
5.7.2 - the version I am using on my S5 (march 2022). Will partition if sizes
and locations not as expected. Even though it is old (2020) it
works great. It is the first version to support Digital Factory
and has lots of bugs related to digital factory, material station and
air manager. But I use the USB drive for printing so I don't care
(no bugs if you avoid DF, AM, MS).
5.8.2 Final version before Buster operating system
6.1.1 - Has Buster and also will partition (somewhat annoying). Buster needs more space so the "root" partition is bigger.
7.0.3 - Has new features so that it will partition in some special
circumstances. This version might be worth installing a few times
before trying the more complicated steps below of repartitioning and
reformatting. But probably you need to change something (remove
partitions? repartition differently?) to get it to repartition
again (to avoid the bad blocks).
All partitions are in f2fs (flash to file system) format. Not
fat32. Not ext4. f2fs. Actually now firmware 5.X and
newer formats the first partition (the boot partition) as ext4.
f2fs is a rarish and unusual
type and the formatter doesn't come on the UM repair disk (damn it -
why does it have to be so complicated!). So to format I installed
olimex version of jessie but it's possible you don't have to do that.
Debian Jessie/Buster OS. side note -
what's "jessie"? It's a version of Debian linux. It's a
complete operating system like windows. Instead of version
numbers the debian people like to use names like "jessie" aka (debian
version 8). Apple Mac IOS also has names for their operating
systems. Did one copy the other? I don't know. I
don't care. Buster is debian version 10.
Reformat steps
Note that version 5.X and newer of Ultimaker firmware checks the
partition sizes and if they aren't perfect it repartitions and formats
automatically. But you probably can't just delete all the
partitions as the recovery procedure needs a place to put it's files
into I think? Or maybe you can - if you can that would be great -
just delete the partitions and rerun the recovery procedure 2 or 3
times until all the bad blocks are locked out and things work
fine. Let me know if this works so I can greatly simplify this
web page!
So I installed the Olimex eMMC jessie operating system onto a uSD card - you
can download the image file from olimex.com but they make you install
bittorrent and it took like 8 hours to download. Someone else
needed it so I put it here for you conveniently:
http://gr5.org/a20-lime2_mainline_uboot_sunxi_kernel_3.4.103_jessie_eMMC_rel_16.zip
Ultimaker has confirmed that most S5 printers (all but a few pre release units) have eMMC memory.
I learned you don't have to use bittorrent as these images are also on an olimex server here:
https://ftp.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/A20-OLinuXino/2.legacy_images_kernel_3.4.x/
Make sure to get "jessie" and "lime2". You can get the
newer version from there ("bullseye") but that won't work with most
lime2 boards so definitely get jessie.
HOWEVER it occurs to me you can probably do all the same stuff on
the
operating system that comes with the Ultimaker recovery image! I
tried using f2fs on the 4.X recovery image but it was "not found" even
though I know for sure it is on there. Certainly the 5.X
recoveries use f2fs in the update script so it might be trivial to use
those? If mkfs.f2fs command says "must specify device" or
something (as opposed to "no such command" or similar) then you can
probalby skip down to step 5.
STEP 1: NETWORK!!! You absolutely need networking and seting up
wifi in Jessie is a pain so use an ethernet cable to your printer -
that probably means it's time to move your printer to another room
where you have ethernet - like your basement or attic router - sorry -
you have to do this. You have to move a laptop or desktop there
too so you can type commands through the olimex serial cable.
Sorry. Just do it. Stop complaining.
STEP 2: if you install olimex jessie then put it on (preferably a
different to save lots of time. Lots of time) a uSD using the
same method you put the Ultimaker img on a uSD. Insert uSD with
power off. Turn power on (with olimex cable connected and
software running to see boot). Watch it boot. Log in with
username "root" and password is "olimex". If not then it's
"password". You can google it.
If I'm wrong about anything email me at thegr5store _at_ gmail.com.
STEP 3 - NETWORK
Give jessie a minute to find your network. It should just work
hopefully. If not you need to learn connmanctl or if you want to
setup through wifi then google "connmanctl setting up wifi to connect
to my network". You will probably need to know what kind of wifi
security you are using and stuff. Anyway here's how to test your
network:
ping 8.8.8.8 <--
this is a google server
good response:
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=0 ttl=118 time=13.646 ms
Type Ctrl+c to halt ping program - if you don't it will run forever.
If that works try pinging using the name instead of the number:
ping google.com
You should get the same response. The "time" is how long it took
for a packet to get to the google server and back to you again.
Can be anywhere from 1ms to 10000ms. Doesn't matter. Faster
is better but it doesn't matter.
If either of those tests fail then, ug, we need to setup your internet
with connmanctl. Google connmanctl - you need to know your local
ip subnet (e.g. 10.0.0.X or 192.168.1.X or 192.168.0.X are the 3 most
common). You will need to know the router ip address and you will
need to setup dns manually. "8.8.8.8" is a good DNS router to use.
More on seting up conmanctl here:
https://variwiki.com/index.php?title=Static_IP_Address
If this works then:
STEP 4 - install the f2fs formatter (f2fs = flash to file system)
apt-get install f2fs-tools
The above line should take a few seconds - it will spew out 10 or more
lines of stuff and it will download the tools and install and should
all work perfectly.
UPDATE!! Jessie is very old and has old certifications so apt-get
probably won't work. This really sucks but you can get f2fs-tools
this way:
Followed the steps from answer #5 with aptftparchive, which
worked flawlessly:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/87130/how-to-quickly-create-a-local-apt-repository-for-random-packages-using-a-debian
Downloaded the f2fs-tools together with libf2fs0 (both 1.7.0-1.1_armhf
from the debian jessie
repo:
http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/f2fs-tools/
STEP 5- reformat your failing partitions like this - it doesn't hurt to
just reformat all 3 but you can just reformat the one that is failing
if you want. I recommend you do all 3:
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p1 -l boot
(alternatively if you are going for version 5.X or newer format boot
partition as ext4 see below)
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p2 -l root
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p3 -l user
The "-l" sets the label of the partition which is critical for the
ultimaker repair procedure to work. This should only take a few
seconds. If it gets an error then we probably have to repartition (step 6).
5B) Test that you can now mount the partition - this step is very
optional since it won't even work on the olimex version of jessie but should work on the ultimaker version
mkdir
gr
<-- this may get an error if folder gr already exists. Don't
worry if it gets an error just move on
mount /dev/mmcblk1p2 gr <-- this won't work on olimex jessie
but will work fine on the Ultimaker jessie
Cut power to S5, Pop out the jessie uSD (if used) and put the Ultimaker
reapir uSD, turn power back on and this time it should work (may take 5
minutes but you will see it doing stuff). As a minimum it should
get much farther. If it still fails then it's time to repartition.
STEP 6: partition with fdisk - if you got here it's because reformatting the partitions was not enough.
First do "fdisk -l" to list all the partitions like I explained
above. Take note of the size of the partitions, where they start
and end and so on. Use your phone to take an image of the output
or cut and paste into some text editor or something to save this
information. Your machine may have different sizes. The
instructions below assume your partitions are the same size as mine. If
different sizes than use different numbers.
Update
S5 with firmware 5.X will look like this:
Device
Boot StartCHS
EndCHS
StartLBA EndLBA Sectors
Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk1p1
32,0,1
1023,3,16
2048 67583
65536 32.0M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p2
1023,3,16
1023,3,16
67584 1998847 1931264 943M 83
Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3
1023,3,16 1023,3,16
1998848 7553023 5554176 2712M 83
Linux
S5 with firmware 6.X may look like this (second partition larger to accomodate Buster):
Device
Boot Start End Sectors Size
Id Type
/dev/mmcblk1p1 2048 67583 65536 32M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p2 67584 3930111 3862528 1.9G 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3 3930112 7553023 3622912 1.7G 83 Linux
So if you want to run with the
latest firmware you need to do this second way for the sizes - note
mainly that p2 - the main OS partition is about twice as big.
Also I strongly recommend you just skip over the first GB so partition
p1 with a "start" value of 5000000 (5 million) which is about
1GB. That will make the last partition only .7GB but that's fine
as even just 0.1GB is plenty for the last partition.
Also note that P1 is formatted
with ext4 now in latest firmwares. This is reported
by one user and also from a UM employee.
Nothing happens to the "hard drive" (flash drive) until you exit the
program. If you cancel/abort out of the program then nothing
happens. But if you exit properly it will do the partition at the
end.
fdisk /dev/mmcblk1 <-- note that you
do blk1!!! you don't want to partition blk0 which is the SD card
now you are running fdisk. It has commands to choose from and
should display the options. Type "m" for help. Try "p" first to display the 3
existing partitions. You have to hit enter after you hit "p".
p <-- displays the 3 partitions
First delete the 3 existing partitions:
d
1
d
2
d
3
w <-- write and save deleted partitions (q command aborts or
ctrl+c)
Start again:
fdisk /dev/mmcblk1
p <-- should show no more partitions. Create them fresh
n p 1 2048 +32M <-- replace spaces with enter key
- this should create the first partition as a 32MB partition
n p 2 67584 +943M <-- replace spaces with enter
key - this should create the second partition as a 32MB partition
n p 3 1998848 <enter> <-- replace spaces
with enter key - this should create the third partition with the
remaining space
w <-- writes and saves - if you don't do this step no partions get
created
Now check your partitions with fdisk -l - should look something like
this (and it will show the blk0 partitions as well which is the sd
card):
fdisk -l <-- should now show this for mmcblk1 device
(ignore mmcblk0 - that's the micro SD card)
Device
Boot StartCHS
EndCHS
StartLBA EndLBA Sectors
Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk1p1
32,0,1
1023,3,16
2048 67583
65536 32.0M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p2
1023,3,16
1023,3,16
67584 1998847 1931264 943M 83
Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3
1023,3,16 1023,3,16
1998848 7553023 5554176 2712M 83
Linux
Step 7: format all 3 partitions - you may need olimex jessie to do this
- see steps 3,4,5 above
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p1 -l boot (format as
ext4 if you plan to install recovery image version 6.X or newer)
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p2 -l root
mkfs.f2fs /dev/mmcblk1p3 -l user
Update - if the first command
fails on partition 1 you have a newer version of mk2fs which doesn't
allow partitions so small. You can either increase the partition
size to 58MB (which works great) or you can format it as ext4 format
(which you need to do anyway if you are installing 6.X or newer).
I think it's safer to format it at
58MB. I don't know what the latest Ultimaker installers do - I
don't know if they check the partition sizes only (if so then try ext4)
or if they check the type of partition (if so then try 58MB
f2fs). Here's the command to format ext4 format:
Mkfs.ext4 -L boot /dev/mmcblk1p1
(this is verbatim from a user and 100% the -L is uppercase for ext4
parameters but not sure about the capital "M")
Replace the uSD with Ultimaker recovery if it's not already in
there, power cycle the printer.
IF IT STILL DOES NOT WORK - AND IS STILL GETTING F2FS ERRORS SUCH
AS THIS:
[ 5.157296]
F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Magic Mismatch, valid(0xf2f52010) - read(0x2000)
[ 5.164887]
F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Can't find valid F2FS filesystem in 1th superblock
Actually that looks like errors on the uSD - so maybe you need to
recreate that? But if you are still getting errors with the
"hard drive" or flash...
We eventually learned we can skip over the first bit of disk where the
errors
are (this shouldn't be necessary because the eMMC "hard drive" has
"wear leveling" yet it seems to work as one user formatted 3 times with
no luck and the first time he used this technique it
worked!). Note that the first partition starts at LBA 2048
(logical block address). Notice how the first 2 (the
critical) partitions combined are about 975MB. You can just kip
over the first 975MB of flash since that's probably where all the
errors are. 975MB appears to end at LBA 1998847. So set it
up so the StartLBA is past that - set the StartLBA to 2000000 (2
million). And fdisk will automatically leave the partition size
of the 3rd partition to be the remainder of the flash drive.
The 3rd partition doesn't need to be 2.7GB. Not sure how
large it
needs to be but I think this just stores gcode files. How large
is your largest gcode file? I'm not sure what else is there but
someone I know says he started the first (boot) partition at
"700000". I don't know if that means LBA 700000 (probably) or
700MB (probably not). So 2 million might leave too little for the
user partition but I doubt it. I think it will be fine.
Actually I recommend you skip the entire first GB as on my S5 I have
almost nothing in the final partition. Just a few gcode files
(ufd files) from old prints done over the network. Even just 0.1GB
should be plenty of space.
Note also that the instructions above need to be modified slightly so
that the second partition starts just past the end of the first.
You may have noticed by now that fdisk prompts you with suggested
values as you go along and you can just let it choose the "start LBA"
for the second and third partitions by simply hitting "enter" and not
entering a value.
UPDATE - It looks like some of
the newer UM firmware versions repartition!!! 6.1 and newer. This is depressing. It definitely won't do
this in version 4.3.2 and that version works fantastic. No
"digital factory" but I don't care. So it seems the main
partition (partition 2) that is used for jessie now is bigger at
1.9GB. You still only need a 100 MB for partition 3 so you can
still make partition 1 start 1GB in from the beginging and have much
more than 100MB. Here is what the recent 5.X firmware partitions
look like these days:
Device
Boot Start End Sectors Size
Id Type
/dev/mmcblk1p1 2048 67583 65536 32M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p2 67584 3930111 3862528 1.9G 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3 3930112 7553023 3622912 1.7G 83 Linux
I recommend you stick with 4.X but if you are going to try 5.X and it
repartitions and then won't boot then you should format as above but
instead of start at 2048 try starting at 5000000 (5 million - which
multiplied by 256 size blocks gets you about 1GB I think).
Hopefully it won't repartition if p2 is already at 1.9GB. But
it's possible it repartitions no matter what. I just don't
know. I could look over the code but that seems like a lot of
work.
CAN'T I JUST BUY THE OLIMEX BOARD?
Yes! The olimex board
for the UM3 is a little cheaper and works on S5R1 (sort of - keep reading
though). Ultimaker part number: UM3; 1782 and for the
UM3-extended: 1783
The S5 Olimex has 2 USB connectors that the UM3 doesn't: to the
camera and the wifi. So if you need either of those features you
will need those connectors installed. I don't know but it's
possible the S5 won't boot if it detects one or both of those
missing.
Also if you use S5 olimex for UM3 or the other way around then you must have the serial cable.
The Olimex boards from Ultimaker have all the software loaded and there
is also an area of the eeprom that stores whether it's a
UM3/UM3E/S5R1. Here's how to change that. If you put one
for the UM3 into the S5 it won't know it's in an S5 and won't talk to
the display so the display will be blank. And you can't put it
into developer mode. So you must have the serial cable.
Here's the command to convert the olimex into another type:
python3 /ulti_installer/configure_eeprom.py 9051
I haven't tried the above command - but I'm told it should work. The number 9051 should be set as follows:
9051 S5R1 (printer has ulti robot on the side panel S5R2 printers have a big U on the side panels)
9066 UM3
9511 UM3 extended
UPDATE TO python3 command above
It looks like the configure_eeprom command isn't in the latest firmware
releases. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be in the installer
but it looks like it was available in older versions of the UM3
firmware at least. I pulled out a few python files to look at the
code. When connected to the olimex you can dump the eeprom
refered to here with hexdump and here is what I get on my UM3:
root@ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c:/# hexdump /sys/bus/i2c/devices/1-0050/eeprom -C
00000000 55 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff cc bd d3 00 5b 4c cb ff |U...........[L..|
00000010 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
*
00000100 00 00 23 5b ff ff ff ff 30 65 7f b1 b6 48 4e 41 |..#[....0e...HNA|
00000110 ac 52 72 1b a6 f3 ab c9 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |.Rr.............|
00000120 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
*
00000800
root@ultimakersystem-ccbdd3005b4c:/#
So above is what you want
typically. I recommend doing the above hexdump on whatever olimex
board you receive to see what it looks like. The device above
looks like a file but it's not - it's a device. I don't know if
you can use a hex editor to edit it directly. Maybe. Maybe
not. Probably.
Note that starting at address 100 (256 decimal) you see "00 00 23
5b" That's hex for 9066 (use a calculator or web page to
translate). 9066 is for UM3.
If you don't have the utility you can try this:
I zipped up the utility here: gr5.org/ulti_install.tar.gz
download that and then copy it to your printer with scp (similar to ssh). For example:
scp ulti_install.tar.gz root@192.168.1.XXX:/
Replace the 192.168.1.XXX with the ip address of your particular
printer. scp works on mac or linux but on windows I think there
is a way to do it with putty maybe? Maybe not - google it.
now unzip it - log into the linux machine and do "cd /" to get to the same folder where you copied it to then do:
tar xvfz ulti_installer.tar.gz
That will create a subfolder (you can actually do this anywhere
you want - you didn't have to scp it to the root (/) folder.
Go into the ulti_installer subfolder and try the python3 command now.
What about just buying Olimex for S5? Well you have to get the
entire assembly and it's very expensive. You could buy a few
Creality printers for the cost of replacing the S5 controller assembly.
Can't I just get the board from Olimex.com?
Not really. Maybe. Read on. You would have to remove a few connectors (including
USB and power which is in the way) and add 2 USB connectors of a
different type. You will need a surface mount solder flow station and
the equipment needed to do this.
Someone at Ultimaker told me the board is basically this one: UM3
/ S5: A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-e16Gs16M for €53 (aka olimex lime2 with
these features). I'm not 100% sure that's all correct if you go
to olimex.com they explain the numbers. A20 and lime2 are
definitely correct. 16G is the overall memory and that's 4X what
the UM3/S3/S5 has but it will work fine. n is for nand memory, e
is for eMMC memory. You
need to have eMMC memory. But you will need to remove some parts
and change
the USB connectors. You can steal the USB connector from your old
broken board. Before ordering anything open up your printer and
look carefully at the part in your printer and compare to Olimex
photos. The eMMC part number is JY997 (well that's the part
number for the 8GB version - there are different sized memories).
MISC
If your printer is almost completely booting but not quite you can dump the most recent linux boot log by typing (log into root/ultimaker):
dmesg
and
you can dump the Ultimaker python boot files with journalctl. For
example, to see all python errors since most recent boot do:
journalctl -b
Good Luck! Email me for corrections, questions, pictures to add
to this, text to add to this! Let me know if this worked!
thegr5store _at_ gmail _dot_ com