Experiences on Etherboot for IDE Compact flash and FLASHROMS

Hi,

Can some please list one's experiences on Etherboot to boot from 
    IDE Compact flash  over here.

Basically, I have to put the etherboot payload and LinuxBIOS on 
    256K/512K FLASH ROMS and the Linux kernel image(2.4.18-3)
    and application on Compact Flash ide.
    Some kind of HOWTO/experience from many who have tried 
    etherboot in this situation.

If one can clearly give out the list or a link
    where one can find this document for this kind setup 
    for etherboot. It would be great.

Thanks and Regards
Deepak

Thanks and Regards
Deepak

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 1 May 2003 [e-mail] wrote:
> Basically, I have to put the etherboot payload and LinuxBIOS on 
> 256K/512K FLASH ROMS and the Linux kernel image(2.4.18-3)
> and application on Compact Flash ide.
> Some kind of HOWTO/experience from many who have tried 
> etherboot in this situation.

target pcm-5823
mainboard advantech/pcm-5823

# Enable Serial Console for debugging
option SERIAL_CONSOLE=1
option TTYS0_BAUD=38400

option DEFAULT_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=9
option DEBUG

option RAMTEST=1
option USE_GENERIC_ROM=1
option USE_ELF_BOOT=1
option ROM_SIZE=262144
option STD_FLASH=1

#payload ../elfImage.9load
payload ../eepro100.ebi

option PAYLOAD_SIZE=196608

===
This will build a 256K linuxbios with etherboot in it. Get an etherboot 
that will load from IDE.

To get your payload on CF: 
First, you MUST fdisk the CF. Make the whole thing a DOS partition, 
doesn't matter. I have found the hard way that for some reason etherboot 
will not work right unless the CF has a partition table on it. I have not 
followed the whole thing through and I assume it is a need for C/H/S info 
that is not there without a partition table or some such.

Then mkelfImage on the kernel of choice.

Then dd if=elfImage_of_kernel of=/dev/hdc bs=4096 skip=1

That's what I do.

ron

[Stefan Reinauer]

* ron minnich  [030501 08:48]:
> Then mkelfImage on the kernel of choice.
>
> Then dd if=elfImage_of_kernel of=/dev/hdc bs=4096 skip=1

should be seek, not skip i think:

seek=BLOCKS
              skip BLOCKS obs-sized blocks at start of output

skip=BLOCKS
              skip BLOCKS ibs-sized blocks at start of input

otherwise you loose your partition table.

Stefan

[Joey Nelson]

ron minnich wrote
> To get your payload on CF: 
> First, you MUST fdisk the CF. Make the whole thing a DOS partition, 
> doesn't matter. I have found the hard way that for some 
> reason etherboot 
> will not work right unless the CF has a partition table on 
> it. I have not 
> followed the whole thing through and I assume it is a need 
> for C/H/S info 
> that is not there without a partition table or some such.
>
> Then mkelfImage on the kernel of choice.
>
> Then dd if=elfImage_of_kernel of=/dev/hdc bs=4096 skip=1

Alternately using sfdisk you can set the first partition to start at
sector 1.  I configure my CF with a sandisk compact flash usb adapter at
/dev/sda.

sfdisk -uS /dev/sda

The '-uS' is to use sectors as the standard unit.  sfdisk is not as
friendly as the standard fdisk, but the standard fdisk doesn't allow the
first partition to start at sector 1 on my system.  Just make sure the
first partition is large enough to hold your elf kernel image.  You can
do what ever you want with the remaining space.

Then when you want to write the kernel out to the flash

dd if=kernel.elf of=/dev/sda1 bs=4096

This has been working great for me.  I have my rootfs as a read only
ext2 fs on the second partition.

Joey

[Deepak Kotian]

Thanks .I will keep this in mind.

But, I am still too far to see the CF IDE from my LinuxBIOS,
It mostly cannot detect my etherboot  or for that matter even ADLO payload
gives
the same result. It just spins/resets after Jumping to code at xxx .......

Regards
Deepak

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joey Nelson" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 1:33 AM
Subject: RE: Experiences on Etherboot for IDE Compact flash and FLASHROMS
> ron minnich wrote
> > To get your payload on CF:
> > First, you MUST fdisk the CF. Make the whole thing a DOS partition,
> > doesn't matter. I have found the hard way that for some
> > reason etherboot
> > will not work right unless the CF has a partition table on
> > it. I have not
> > followed the whole thing through and I assume it is a need
> > for C/H/S info
> > that is not there without a partition table or some such.
> >
> > Then mkelfImage on the kernel of choice.
> >
> > Then dd if=elfImage_of_kernel of=/dev/hdc bs=4096 skip=1
>
> Alternately using sfdisk you can set the first partition to start at
> sector 1.  I configure my CF with a sandisk compact flash usb adapter at
> /dev/sda.
>
> sfdisk -uS /dev/sda
>
> The '-uS' is to use sectors as the standard unit.  sfdisk is not as
> friendly as the standard fdisk, but the standard fdisk doesn't allow the
> first partition to start at sector 1 on my system.  Just make sure the
> first partition is large enough to hold your elf kernel image.  You can
> do what ever you want with the remaining space.
>
> Then when you want to write the kernel out to the flash
>
> dd if=kernel.elf of=/dev/sda1 bs=4096
>
> This has been working great for me.  I have my rootfs as a read only
> ext2 fs on the second partition.
>
> Joey
>
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