I'm trying to get together funding for a research project at my company to build a generic platform for high availability devices using Linux, LinuxBIOS, etc, as the software portion.
I had some general questions about LinuxBIOS I wanted to ask while I'm still collecting information to report in my project plan.
a) I have a requirement of a 4+ PCI slots, compact flash booting via IDE, and a serial console. Video, sound, etc, are pointless for any project we will take on. Onboard network ports are nice. What hardware works best? I don't care about AMD vs. Intel, I want to know what (hopefully easily available) motherboards are best served by LinuxBIOS in general. If this is going to start a flame war, I don't mind personal responses to this question. :)
b) Are there any known problems running any types of PCI cards? High speed serial, ethernet, whatever, or if it works with Linux, it should work just fine?
c) Can Disk-on-Chip BIOS solutions be reflashed several times? I would like these machines to be remotely upgradeable in all aspects while having a local device to boot from.
d) Are any SMP motherboards supported?
Thanks for your time,
Justin C. Darby
"Justin C. Darby" jdarby@powercom.net writes:
I'm trying to get together funding for a research project at my company to build a generic platform for high availability devices using Linux, LinuxBIOS, etc, as the software portion.
I had some general questions about LinuxBIOS I wanted to ask while I'm still collecting information to report in my project plan.
a) I have a requirement of a 4+ PCI slots, compact flash booting via IDE, and a serial console. Video, sound, etc, are pointless for any project we will take on. Onboard network ports are nice. What hardware works best? I don't care about AMD vs. Intel, I want to know what (hopefully easily available) motherboards are best served by LinuxBIOS in general. If this is going to start a flame war, I don't mind personal responses to this question. :)
We have at least one board with 6 slots and 4 PCI-X busses...
b) Are there any known problems running any types of PCI cards? High speed serial, ethernet, whatever, or if it works with Linux, it should work just fine?
Only video.... And that is just initialization glitches.
c) Can Disk-on-Chip BIOS solutions be reflashed several times? I would like these machines to be remotely upgradeable in all aspects while having a local device to boot from.
All recent BIOS solutions can reflashed several times.
d) Are any SMP motherboards supported?
yes.
Eric
"Justin C. Darby" jdarby@powercom.net writes:
I'm trying to get together funding for a research project at my company to build a generic platform for high availability devices using Linux, LinuxBIOS, etc, as the software portion.
I had some general questions about LinuxBIOS I wanted to ask while I'm still collecting information to report in my project plan.
a) I have a requirement of a 4+ PCI slots, compact flash booting via IDE, and a serial console. Video, sound, etc, are pointless for any project we will take on. Onboard network ports are nice. What hardware works best? I don't care about AMD vs. Intel, I want to know what (hopefully easily available) motherboards are best served by LinuxBIOS in general. If this is going to start a flame war, I don't mind personal responses to this question. :)
We have at least one board with 6 slots and 4 PCI-X busses...
b) Are there any known problems running any types of PCI cards? High speed serial, ethernet, whatever, or if it works with Linux, it should work just fine?
Only video.... And that is just initialization glitches.
c) Can Disk-on-Chip BIOS solutions be reflashed several times? I would like these machines to be remotely upgradeable in all aspects while having a local device to boot from.
All recent BIOS solutions can reflashed several times.
d) Are any SMP motherboards supported?
yes.
Eric
Thank you for your reply.
I was wondering if you had the make and model of a SMP motherboard that supports 4 PCI slots?
This isin't documented well that I can see in the LinuxBIOS tarballs. Sorry to bother you.
Thanks again, Justin C. Darby
-----Original Message----- From: linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org [mailto:linuxbios-admin@clustermatic.org] On Behalf Of Eric W. Biederman Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 11:36 AM To: Justin C. Darby Cc: linuxbios@clustermatic.org Subject: Re: R&D Project
"Justin C. Darby" jdarby@powercom.net writes:
I'm trying to get together funding for a research project at my company to build a generic platform for high availability devices using Linux, LinuxBIOS, etc, as the software portion.
I had some general questions about LinuxBIOS I wanted to ask while I'm
still collecting information to report in my project plan.
a) I have a requirement of a 4+ PCI slots, compact flash booting via IDE, and a serial console. Video, sound, etc, are pointless for any project we will take on. Onboard network ports are nice. What hardware
works best? I don't care about AMD vs. Intel, I want to know what (hopefully easily available) motherboards are best served by LinuxBIOS
in general. If this is going to start a flame war, I don't mind personal responses to this question. :)
We have at least one board with 6 slots and 4 PCI-X busses...
b) Are there any known problems running any types of PCI cards? High speed serial, ethernet, whatever, or if it works with Linux, it should
work just fine?
Only video.... And that is just initialization glitches.
c) Can Disk-on-Chip BIOS solutions be reflashed several times? I would
like these machines to be remotely upgradeable in all aspects while having a local device to boot from.
All recent BIOS solutions can reflashed several times.
d) Are any SMP motherboards supported?
yes.
Eric _______________________________________________ Linuxbios mailing list Linuxbios@clustermatic.org http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Justin C. Darby wrote:
I was wondering if you had the make and model of a SMP motherboard that supports 4 PCI slots?
just about any supermicro or tyan with e7500 chipset ought to be possible. Also I have a tyan guiness here (2xK7, 4 PCI slot) that uses linuxbios.
ron
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ebiederman＠lnxi.com -
Justin C. Darby -
Ronald G Minnich