Ronald G Minnich wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Tyson D Sawyer wrote:
> 
> 
>>Kernel patches are not maintained in useful chunks such as IDE spin up.
>>
> 
> agreed.
> 
> 
>>Please don't take this as bitching.  However, since its been about a
>>year since I last worked on linuxbios I have a bit of an outsiders
>>view again and I see some things that keep this from going prime-time
>>in any way.
>>
> 
> your comments and contributions are always useful.
> 
> 
> I would strongly encourage you to make the effort to get the elfimage
> stuff to work for you. It drove me totally nuts until the lightbulb in my
> head turned on. Since then I've found it to be very easy. I've used it for
> a 128-node alpha cluster, embedded clusters, etc. It's quite neat.


Cool!  Where can I get some cheap air flow simulation software if I want 
to build my own cluster for simulating airplanes and race cars? ;-)

(I'm actually only slightly less than half serious)

 
> Maybe we can do a dialogue, right here on linuxbios list, and then from
> that I can try to put together the elfimage HOWTO. If you're willing, I am
> too.


Sounds like a plan.  Give me some time to get my current work merged 
into the latest linuxbios code as well as doing other "real" work.


> So, what is it you need to do?


My TODO list doesn't relate directly to linuxbios, but I should have the 
freedom to "do it right" as I've tried to do with previous contributions.

Specifically for the project I'm working on I need to make/keep the code 
supportable.  This generally means getting up to date with current 
linuxbios technology.

I need to better organize the boot and update process so that we can do 
upgrades to these robots without ever leaving one unbootable as it costs 
several hundred dollars to open one of these things up and reseal it if 
we have to really bootstrap it again.

Those are the high level goals I need to achieve for the project.  The 
more tangible TODO for achieving this are:

- Look at linux booting linux instead of the linuxbios command line for 
choosing kernels and filesystems that I use now.

- Use the elf image kernel with an included basic filesystem because I 
expect its just a better way to do it than what I'm doing now.

- Get/keep up to date with current linuxbios technology.


- Contribute what I come up with that helps linuxbios easier to use and 
support.

Though I'm not getting paid to develop linuxbios specifically, it is 
considered to be a "good thing(tm)" if even those here are not dependent 
on me for linuxbios expertise and documentation of all components in our 
system is required by our customer so I do have reasonable freedom to do 
a fair bit more than just get the robot to work.

Was that more information than you needed? ;-)


> ron


Cheers!
Ty

-- 
Tyson D Sawyer                             iRobot Corporation
Senior Systems Engineer                    Military Systems Division
[EMAIL PROTECTED]                         Robots for the Real World
603-532-6900 ext 206                       http://www.irobot.com

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