zrenx

I installed a Debian system on my Buffalo LS-WXL two years ago.

Recently, I want to play with some Nodejs, the LS-WXL will be my server, but the Linux kernel on it was too old (2.6.32). So I decided to upgrade it first. Obviously, compile a new kernel was my first thought. However, when I compiled the first one, there was a few patches, which I don’t think I can find new ones for the new kernel version.

I searched and searched, came across this thread, it says:

Support for the LS-XHL and LS-CHLv2 was added in the official Debian packets.
Just install linux-image-kirkwood and flash-kernel from wheezy-backports and reboot.

Similar devices, this method might works on LS-WXL as well. I tried and failed on “Unsupported platform”.

Early, I found this github repo: https://github.com/rogers0/OpenLinkstation
It supposed to be able to convert stock Linux system into a Debian system. There are bash scripts I can use as a instruction.

The magic begins:

• Edit /etc/flash-kernel/db

Machine: Buffalo LS-WXL
Kernel-Flavors: kirkwood
Machine-Id: 527
DTB-Id: kirkwood-lswxl.dtb
DTB-Append: yes
U-Boot-Kernel-Address: 0x00008000
U-Boot-Initrd-Address: 0x0
Boot-Kernel-Path: /boot/uImage.buffalo
Boot-Initrd-Path: /boot/initrd.buffalo
Boot-DTB-Path: /boot/dtb
Required-Packages: u-boot-tools
Bootloader-Sets-Incorrect-Root: yes

I edited a little to match what’s on my machine. Boot-DTB-Path is where a dtb file will be generated

• Copy kirkwood-lswxl.dtb and kirkwood-lswxl.dts from 1_debootstrap/dtb/ to /etc/flash-kernel/dtb/

• Run: update-initramfs -uk all

• Reboot and Good luck!