Subject: [E3-hacking] Boot from flash

From: Antony Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 13:57:40 +0100

Hi.

I've just got my first E3 booting Linux 2.6.17 using the Wiki guidelines.

It's great to see a Tux logo on the E3 display with the kernel boot messages 
going past, and to have a command line at the other end of the serial port.

I have two questions:

1. How do I enable the E3's keyboard/s so that I can use the ash shell from 
there as well as (or instead of) on the end of the serial port?

(I've tried changing the kernel boot arguments from "console=tty0 
console=ttyS0,115200n8" to "console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0"; I've tried 
just "console=tty0" and I've tried no console definition at all.)

2. Now that I know I have a 2.6.27 kernel which works on the machine, is there 
a way to load this into the onboard flash so that the machine boots 
standalone into real Linux, instead of having to use the serial cable every 
time?

Thanks,

Antony.

-- 
Python is executable pseudocode.
Perl is executable line noise.

                                                     Please reply to the list;
                                                           please don't CC me.

---

From: Jonathan McDowell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 19:05:06 +0100

On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 01:57:40PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
 
> I have two questions:
> 
> 1. How do I enable the E3's keyboard/s so that I can use the ash shell
> from there as well as (or instead of) on the end of the serial port?
> 
> console=ttyS0,115200n8" to "console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0"; I've
> tried just "console=tty0" and I've tried no console definition at
> all.)

You need to edit /etc/inittab and ensure there's a line like:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1

I believe the default initrd only has a getty on the serial console.

> 2. Now that I know I have a 2.6.27 kernel which works on the machine,
> is there a way to load this into the onboard flash so that the machine
> boots standalone into real Linux, instead of having to use the serial
> cable every time?

Have you looked at the E3_release_v2.tar.gz tarball in
ftp://the.earth.li/pub/e3/ ? It's not 100% reliable, but I've had a few
reports of success from people.

J.

-- 
   noodles is a green buckwheat    |  .''`.  Debian GNU/Linux Developer
 noodle colored and flavored with  | : :' :  Happy to accept PGP signed
             green tea             | `. `'   or encrypted mail - RSA +
                                   |   `-    DSA keys on the keyservers.

---

From: Antony Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 19:59:54 +0100

> I believe the default initrd only has a getty on the serial console.

Ah, right, that did the trick - thanks :)

I'd forgotten to check something as basic as whether getty was listening - I'm 
too used to distros spawning at least 6 of them that I hadn't looked here :)

> reports of success from people.

Yes, I found that whilst poking around in my downloads this afternoon, and I 
can confirm that:

a) it works fine for me too (on an E3 bought in March from Tesco, and never 
plugged into a phone line)

b) the time taken to write the NAND backup to the USB drive was much less than 
the README or the on-screen instructions suggested - just a few minutes in 
total

Now I just need to buy a few USB Ethernet adapters to get the E3s plugged in 
to the world sensibly :)

Well done with the project, and thanks for your help (and thanks for the UKUUG 
talk, too, by the way).

Antony.

-- 
One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.