Debian on Synology Armada 370/XP NAS boxes

[Alexander Pohl]

Hi,

Is there hope to have support for Debian on Synology NAS boxes with 
Armada 370/XP processors added in the future? The new generation of 
Synology NAS boxes is almost entirely based on ARM Armada SoC's, so if 
Debian adds support for this platform it would be possible to install on 
many more NAS models. For example, models based on these processors are 
the hugely popular DS213j and lately DS114, DS214, DS214+, DS414 and RS214.

Ideally, one would have to supply an u-boot version which has the Grub 
API enabled and then to chain load Grub from there, which in turns loads 
Debian initramfs and kernel images. This way keeping the system up to 
date with newer kernels would be easy as this is all handled by Grub.

The problem for development and testing I see is that the u-boot image 
supplied by Synology does not have the Grub API enabled, so one has to 
flash a new version of u-boot first, which is targeted for the specific 
platform. The bootrom of the DS213j does not support the uart boot 
method implemented in kwboot, so if the update of the u-boot image fails 
one is left with a bricked unit. One could try to program the SPI flash 
in-circuit, but this might not work.

Could you please elaborate on the reasons why Synology boxes are not yet 
supported by the Debian installer images and where the problems are to 
implement support in the future.

Many thanks,
Alexander