Andy Ruhl wrote:
You can use telnet to get into redboot. Make sure you ifconfig a 192.168.0.x address, because the Slug starts up at 192.168.0.1. Then load the kernel using (assuming your tftp server is at 192.168.0.2)2009/2/20 Andy Ruhl <acruhl%gmail.com@localhost>:Any ideas about what I'm doing wrong? Does telnetting into RedBoot actually work to load a NetBSD kernel? Maybe I really need the serial port?Ok, I looked harder and found this: http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_the_Linksys_NSLU2_(Slug)_without_a_serial_port,_using_NFS_and_telnet So it looks like it should be possible to boot a tftp loaded kernel from RedBoot after telnetting to it. I guess the downside is you don't get a console, you have to do a full NFS setup to get a running system, then use that system to install onto a local USB disk. This is kind of a bummer. I'll try this. I'm also hoping to run an expect script from the tftp server machine so some form of unattended reboot might be possible. More later. Andy
load -r -b 0x200000 -h 192.168.0.2 whatever-the-name-of-your-kernel-isThe kernels built following the instructions in the wiki do boot. I've used them on a Slug with a serial port and one without. However, if it wasn't clear, you can't telnet into the kernel until after it boots up. So you've got to go through all the setup stuff (either NFS or USB disk) first. If you don't have a serial port, the hard part is waiting. The first time the system boots up, it will fsck the file system, which can take some time. But if you interrupt it, it will do it again next time you boot, so there's no getting out of it. The NFS version seems to boot faster the first time than a large UFS disk, but even there it can be minutes. For a 300 GB USB drive, it can be take an hour (or more). One of the reasons I put in the section on versions that are known to work is, with -current, you never really know if it will boot until you try it, and with no feedback you don't know if you did something wrong or if there is a problem with -current. So if you follow the instructions and it didn't boot, more than likely you did something wrong. But, then, maybe I did. ;-) One potential difficulty (though I've never checked it out) is that the Slug is big-endian and a UFS disk written with a little-endian system (i386) may not work. I know I had to enable the bi-endian file system (options FFS_EI) in the Slug configuration file when building the install kernel since crunchgen was running on a little-endian system. I tried to build an install version of the kernel that used telnet instead of the serial port, but was unsuccessful. Could never really figure out crunchgen. One thing I have only played with a little is putting a kernel into flash. Which is where we really want to go. I've gotten a bootable, gzipped kernel down to 800 kB or so, but don't know anything about unzipping and sticking it into the right memory location. I'm interested enough to have a go at it if anybody can point the way.
Hope this helps, Don