Subject: Re: Netpliance Iopener booted with NetBSD...
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org, current-users@netbsd.org>
From: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@shagadelic.org>
List: current-users
Date: 03/13/2000 10:00:09
On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 06:41:34AM -0500, Andrew Gillham wrote:

 > The steps involved are: (using a normal keyboard BTW)
 > 	1.  Get to a root shell, via 'ESC 4' and fast typing. :)
 > 	2.  Bring up PPP to a NetBSD machine.  Having a PBX helps.
 > 	3.  Backup the 16MB of flash, with the following:
 > 	    # cat /dev/hd0 | gzip -9 > hd0.gz
 > 	    # ftp <your server>
 > 	    ftp> put hd0.gz
 > 	4. Replace flash with NetBSD image, by ftping compressed file.
 > 	   # gzip -d -c file_name.gz | cat > /dev/hd0
 > 	5. Wait a few seconds, yank power to prevent QNX updating flash.
 > 	6. Reboot under NetBSD, enjoy.

Cool!

So, maybe what we should do is start producing a 16M flash image suitable
for use as an iOpener root fs with the normal distribution :-)  Alternatively,
one could use sysinst to rewrite the flash with a suitable root FS.  Sadly,
sysinst doesn't really have a good way to deal with "just root on here, please,
I'll put usr on NFS..."

 > Obviously I've boiled it down too far. :-)  If anyone out there wants
 > more specifics, let me know.  Currently the USB Ethernet is not ideal as
 > the attach is deferred until *after* the root filesystem mount.  So I

I really wanted to fix this with the config_pending stuff, but while it
more or less works for e.g. CardBus and PCMCIA, it doesn't work for USB
because the USB code is constructed such that it decrements its pending
configuration as soon as the first device is discovered on the USB.

This loses, since once a hub is discovered, it then asynchrously does
discovery on all the hub ports.

Maybe when a hub is discovered, it should increment config_pending for
each port that it has... that might be enough to defer mounting of the
root FS until e.g. the USB Ethernet is found.

 > and making sure the audio works.  Yup, a $99 MP3 station. :)
 > 
 > So, for $99 you can get a cool LCD panel computer, add a $40 USB Ethernet
 > and make a diskless X terminal, etc.

Yah, I gotta head down to CC soon :-)

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@shagadelic.org>