WD My Cloud Gen2 (Kernel / Distribution / Information) drop

• mainline kernel support tested with 4.11.x / 4.12.x

  • device tree source armada-375-wdmc-gen2.dts

  • kernel config kernel-4.11.8.config, kernel-4.12.0.config

  • kernel uImage with dtb uImage (4.12.0)

  • build your own kernel

    • download kernel source from https://www.kernel.org/
    • extract the kernel archive
    • copy kernel-4.12.0.config to linux-4.12/.config
    • copy armada-375-wdmc-gen2.dts to linux-4.12/linux-4.12/arch/arm/boot/dts/
    • ready to build the kernel (you can use build_kernel_image.sh)

     cd linux-4.12
     make -j2 zImage
     make armada-375-wdmc-gen2.dtb
     cat arch/arm/boot/zImage arch/arm/boot/dts/armada-375-wdmc-gen2.dtb > zImage_and_dtb
     mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x00008000 -e 0x00008000 -n 'WDMC-Gen2' -d zImage_and_dtb uImage
     rm zImage_and_dtb
     make -j2 modules modules_install
    
    

    copy uImage to /boot of your boot partition

  • uRamdisk modified (Original from AllesterFox)

    Can boot original firmware, debian from AllesterFox, alpine linux. It looks for a linux part as 2nd on usb stick and boots from there. If there is none, it boots from 3rd partition on SATA drive. Copy to /boot on 1st partition of the usb stick or to 3rd partition of the harddrive.

  • build-initramfs.sh

    builds a minimal initramfs. Can boot from kernel commandline, usb-stick 2nd partition, hdd 3rd partition. placed in /boot/uInitrd. rename it to uRamdisk.

• alpine linux diskless image

  • alpine-wdmc-gen2-3.6.2-armhf.tar.gz

    contains a complete bootable diskless image of alpine linux. modified to ignore "root=". "root" is not setable on WD My Cloud. And enabled SSH daemon, you can ssh to it after booting. root account has no password. Kernel 4.12 is included, but no modules.

  • alpine initramfs image with ssh (without password!)

• install

  • Use an USB 2.0 stick! I had the problem, that usb 3.0 sticks aren't always booting. If you have only an usb 3.0 stick, remove stick, turn wdmc2 on, when the blue light blinks insert usb stick fast, using this i could boot from usb 3.0 sick.

  • make a dos partition table (not gpt) on usb stick.

  • make a partition "W95 FAT32 (LBA)" numeric 0x0C on usb stick

  • make a FAT32 filesystem on usb stick.

  • extact alpine-wdmc-gen2-3.6.2-armhf.tar.gz to the root of the usb stick.

    You should have:

    `-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            26 Jun 17 11:47 .alpine-release`
    `-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          3427 Jan  1  1980 alpine.apkovl.tar.gz´
    `drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jun 17 11:47 apks`
    `drwxr-xr-x    5 root     root          4096 Jul  5 12:02 boot`
        ```
    on the usb stick.