Sounds great, thanks for the help. I have one other question though,
LinuxBIOS will fit on a 4Mbit flash chip if my root filesystem in on a
hard drive, correct? Also, the specs for the VIA EPIA MII say the BIOS
is 2/4Mbit, does this mean I can use either size or does it mean that it
only works with one of these sizes?
Thanks,
Michael Robinson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.fuzzymuzzle.com
Hendricks David W. wrote:
LinuxBIOS does not have its own kernel. The way it usually works is either
LinuxBIOS boots a kernel from flash or LinuxBIOS boots a payload (eg FILO
or Etherboot) which then boots a kernel. LinuxBIOS is its own entity in
either case.
If you have an IDE hard disk, you can use LinuxBIOS and FILO to boot your
kernel off that hard disk and its existing filesystem as you would with
LILO or GRUB. FILO can be downloaded here:
http://te.to/~ts1/filo/ .
Basically this is what I would do with your hardware:
1. Download FILO, edit the Config file.
Change the AUTOBOOT_FILE line to let FILO know where your kernel
is located and also pass any extra kernel parameters. Example:
hda2:/boot/x86_64 root=/dev/hda2 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 vga=792
video=atyfb:mode:1024x768
Look under "# Filesystems" and enable whichever filesystem(s) you
require to read your kernel.
Run "make" to generate filo.elf
2. Open your freebios2/targets/via/epia-m/Config.lb file and edit the
"payload" lines. There should be two of them, one under romimage "normal"
and one under romimage "fallback". Change them to point to filo.elf. For
example:
payload /usr/src/filo-0.4.2/filo.elf
3. cd to freebios2/targets and run "./buildtarget via/epia-m/"
4. cd to via/epia-m/epia-m and run "make"
5. If all goes well, you should now have linuxbios.rom. Burn it on a spare
flash part (You can try the flash_rom utility in
freebios2/util/flash_and_burn), hook up a serial connection to another
computer, power cycle and see what happens.
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Michael Robinson wrote:
David,
LinuxBIOS has its own kernel correct? Or is LinuxBIOS not really a
Linux kernel, but boots a Linux kernel that can be stored on the
DiskOnChip or HDD? I just want to verify how it works because I've
heard so many references to multiple kernels that I'm not sure exactly
how the whole process works. In response to your last question I'd like
to boot my distro off of hard disk if I'm thinking correctly.
Thanks,
Michael Robinson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.fuzzymuzzle.com
Hendricks David W. wrote:
You can do it that way, too. The method suggested earlier was to use the
distribution kernel on the compact flash device. If you want a stripped
kernel to fit alongside LinuxBIOS on your BIOS ROM, you can do that as
well (Look at targets/arima/hdama/Config.kernelimage.lb for an example).
You could then use Kexec or Two Kernel Monte (kmonte) to boot
another kernel.
So I guess what we need to figure out is how you want to boot your kernel.
Do you want it to be booted off an IDE device or the same flash part
alongside your BIOS?
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Michael Robinson wrote:
So in my case FILO is booting the actual Linux kernel that you will be
using when you perform tasks on the computer? So if you were using a
DiskOnChip your Linux distribution kernel would be on the actual
DiskOnChip? I was under the impression that the LinuxBIOS kernel was on
the DiskOnChip and the distribution kernel was on a hard drive. Could
you please clarify.
Thanks,
Michael Robinson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.fuzzymuzzle.com
Hendricks David W. wrote:
Sounds about right. Put your kernel on an IDE device with a filesystem
(FILO supports EXT2/3, Reiser, XFS, etc) and use FILO as your LinuxBIOS
payload (payload /where/filo/is/located/filo.elf in your
targets/via/epia-m/Config.lb file). You also need to tell FILO where
yoru kernel is located and give it any options you want passed to the
kernel in the "AUTOBOOT_FILE" line, which should look something like
a LILO prompt: hda1:/kernel root/dev/hda3 console=ttyS0,115200
Boot image generally implies kernel.
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Michael Robinson wrote:
---The trend seems to be NOT to use DiskOnChip but rather a CF <> IDE
adapter. Using FILO you can boot from the CF.---
So I'd flash FILO to the BIOS, then it would load the LinuxBIOS kernel
image, and then the kernel image would do whatever you want LinuxBIOS to
do, right? Or am I wrong... It says FILO loads a "boot image", whats the
definition of a "boot image", is it just the kernel?
Thanks,
Michael Robinson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.fuzzymuzzle.com
Larry Matter wrote:
what
does the DiskOnChip provide to the LinuxBIOs project that the standard
flash chip can't?
More than 2 megabits of storage.
My second is that I'm going to be using the VIA EPIA
MII motherboard which has a PLCC BIOS, as far as I can tell PLCC
DiskOnChips aren't very readily available. Should I use a DIP to PLCC
adapter; how did the other people who used this board do it?
The trend seems to be NOT to use DiskOnChip but rather a CF <> IDE
adapter. Using FILO you can boot from the CF.
My final
question is how do I pick the size of the DiskOnChip.
So if you're going to go for the CF <> IDE, then it just needs to be as
big as your root partition (or even just an initrd). There are many
other alternatives depending on network, disk, etc.
And if you've been following this list for a bit you'll know that you
can't (yet) boot off of the CF adapter on the EPIA MII.
One last word of advice, get a bios savior.
Larry
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