> >>>> We have this embedded MIPS machine > >>> > >>> embedded MIPS -> NetBSD might be a good choice > >> > >> We don't know anything about NetBSD, but if you could point us in the > >> right direction, we could try it!
NetBSD is derived from real Unix, runs on more platforms than anything else, and cares about quality. Popular with the embedded crowd. home page: http://www.netbsd.org/ mailing lists: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/ Looks like there are at least 8 mailing lists for various flavors of MIPS: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-evbmips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-mips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sbmips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-ews4800mips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-hpcmips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-mipsco/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-newsmips/tindex.html http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sgimips/tindex.html "packages" (3rd party apps): http://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/packages.html Note: in NetBSD-speak, a "port" refers to a hardware platform, e.g. x86 vs amd64 vs mips vs alpha ... (In FreeBSD-speak, a "port" is similar to a "package") Documentation: http://www.netbsd.org/docs/ > > The latest release for the mips port is available from > > ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-4.0/mipsco/ > > > > You'll need a kernel and the sets. The absolute minimum (for something like a firewall) is a kernel, "base" and "etc". You'll presumably want the compiler, X11, man pages, ...) The basic system is fairly lean-n-mean, if you don't find what you want/need there, (emacs, web browser, whatever) look in packages. > At this point, we're desperate for any solution. We were tinkering > with some ideas when we got someone interested in helping produce > this. It wouldn't be a Traversal product, but it would be open > hardware. But now they want to see something work or they're not > interested. We just need a minimal browser to load HTML from 'disk' > and display images and text and links. Links (with -g for graphics mode) and dillo can do this. I don't have a MIPS based computer, so I don't know offhand what big browsers are available precompiled (might have mozilla or firefox). I get the impression you're in a bit of a hurry, so the smaller lump of code would be faster to get working. > Somehow we need to boot from a compact flash, meaning that we need a > bootable image on one. > We want to boot off either the internal 1GB flash or the pluggable > compact flash. We can reprogram the compact all we like, while the > internal one... I need to get more info on it. > It's the bootstrapping that we need to get past. I believe the demo > device we have has networking hardware on it, so once we have the > minimum, we can just install stuff from ports. So does this compact flash look like a disk, or what? If it looks like a disk, you probably want to start with a disklabel (partition information). I don't know if MIPS has any restrictions, but usually partition 'a' is root, partition 'b' is swap, 'c' or 'd' is the entire disk. Other partitions can usually be whatever you want (/usr /var /home /whatever). Some ports default to a limit of 8 partitions per drive. The normal default filesystem is FFS (fast filesystem) aka UFS. If the hardware can boot from the network, that might be the easiest way to bootstrap it? Suggested man pages: boot(8) installboot(8) disklabel(8) newfs(8) _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
