I'm trying to get etherboot and linuxbios running on a supermicro p4dpe.
The config file I'm using is below. It builds okay, and I get a romimage of around 460k (not sure why it isn't 524288), but when I burn it (using flash_and_burn), it doesn't seem to work. I get no output on the serial port. Note that I have BOOT_IDE set to 1 because at this point I would be happy just to see it boot anything, and I have linux on the ide hard disk. Does BOOT_IDE do what I think it does, or is that for something else? Is there something wrong with my config file, or should I use some other flash program for this board? I tried the one from supermicro, and doesn't seem to like my romimage file, it exits with "cannot close filehandle".
Also, a few other questions...
Does linuxbios cause a beep or do anything so that when the machine is powered on I would have some clue that it is working?
Since I'm using the etherboot elf image as a payload, the linux and commandline directives in the config file do nothing, right?
What does USE_FALLBACK_IMAGE do exactly?
LinuxBios Config file:
target supermicro mainboard supermicro/p4dpe option USE_FALLBACK_IMAGE=0 option ROM_SIZE=524288 option ROM_IMAGE_SIZE=49152 option SERIAL_CONSOLE=1 option TTYS0_BAUD=9600 option TTYS0_BASE=0x3f8 option TTYS0_LCS=0x3 option DEFAULT_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=9 option MAXIMUM_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=8 option USE_ELF_BOOT=1 option BOOT_IDE=1 payload ../eepro100.elf option CPU_CLOCK_MULTIPLIER=XEON_X17 option MAINBOARD_POWER_ON_AFTER_POWER_FAIL=MAINBOARD_POWER_ON linux /usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14 commandline root=/dev/hda2 console=ttyS0,9600 single
Greetings,
LinuxBIOS for that board (and many others) supports two copies of LinuxBIOS, fallback and primary. The fallback image is intended to be old and stable and it's purpose is to act as a sort of rescue image. The primary image is the one that gets updated to the latest and greatest, and is meant to be more versatile and complete.
The fallback image is loaded at the top of the flash, and always recieves control at power on or reset. It does very minimal setup (switch to 32bit flat memory protected mode), checks and clears the CMOS boot bit, and if it was set, jumps to the primary image. This way, if the primary fails, hitting reset will boot from the fallback image alone.
From your config, you were building a primary image. the missing bytes are
for the fallback image to be appended. It didn't work because you didn't have a fallback image at the top of the flash (the end of the image file).
G'day, sjames
On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Atherton, Stephen wrote:
I'm trying to get etherboot and linuxbios running on a supermicro p4dpe.
The config file I'm using is below. It builds okay, and I get a romimage of around 460k (not sure why it isn't 524288), but when I burn it (using flash_and_burn), it doesn't seem to work. I get no output on the serial port. Note that I have BOOT_IDE set to 1 because at this point I would be happy just to see it boot anything, and I have linux on the ide hard disk. Does BOOT_IDE do what I think it does, or is that for something else? Is there something wrong with my config file, or should I use some other flash program for this board? I tried the one from supermicro, and doesn't seem to like my romimage file, it exits with "cannot close filehandle".
Also, a few other questions...
Does linuxbios cause a beep or do anything so that when the machine is powered on I would have some clue that it is working?
Since I'm using the etherboot elf image as a payload, the linux and commandline directives in the config file do nothing, right?
What does USE_FALLBACK_IMAGE do exactly?
LinuxBios Config file:
target supermicro mainboard supermicro/p4dpe option USE_FALLBACK_IMAGE=0 option ROM_SIZE=524288 option ROM_IMAGE_SIZE=49152 option SERIAL_CONSOLE=1 option TTYS0_BAUD=9600 option TTYS0_BASE=0x3f8 option TTYS0_LCS=0x3 option DEFAULT_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=9 option MAXIMUM_CONSOLE_LOGLEVEL=8 option USE_ELF_BOOT=1 option BOOT_IDE=1 payload ../eepro100.elf option CPU_CLOCK_MULTIPLIER=XEON_X17 option MAINBOARD_POWER_ON_AFTER_POWER_FAIL=MAINBOARD_POWER_ON linux /usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14 commandline root=/dev/hda2 console=ttyS0,9600 single
to expand on fallback vs. primary.
You need to build TWO linuxbioses, a fallback and a primary. The fallback is 64k. The primary is (romsize-64k).
To build a romimage, you build the fallback, build the primary, then:
cat primary/romimage fallback/romimage > final_romimage
flash_rom final_romimage
ron
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Atherton, Stephen -
ron minnich -
steven james