Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

[Alessandro Staltari]

I'm using M-System's DiskOnChip2000. I'd like to use mtd drivers provided
within the Linux kernel 2.4.0 but some questions arise:
Which is the most reliable GPL'd flash translation layer available in the
linux 2.4.0 kernel? Is it ready to be used in production?
Which boot loader should I use to boot the system from the flash?

Thanks

Alessandro Staltari




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Re: Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

[David Woodhouse]

a_staltari@yahoo.com said:
> I'm using M-System's DiskOnChip2000. I'd like to use mtd drivers
> provided within the Linux kernel 2.4.0 but some questions arise: Which
> is the most reliable GPL'd flash translation layer available in the
> linux 2.4.0 kernel?

On the DiskOnChip, you need to use NFTL.

> Is it ready to be used in production? 
I'm using M-System's DiskOnChip2000. I'd like to use mtd drivers provided
within the Linux kernel 2.4.0 but some questions arise:
Which is the most reliable GPL'd flash translation layer available in the
linux 2.4.0 kernel? Is it ready to be used in production?
Which boot loader should I use to boot the system from the flash?

Almost. There are some problems with the larger devices, but it should be 
OK on the smaller (<36M) ones. The problems with larger devices should be 
fixed soon - as soon as someone actually has time to work on it, basically.

> Which boot loader should I use to boot the system from the flash? 

You can leave the original firmware in place, which makes it pretend to be 
a BIOS-supported hard drive. So you can use any bootloader, although some 
versions of LILO have problems with the amount of memory that the firmware 
eats. We can also load Grub into the DiskOnChip in place of the original 
firmware, and we've done about 90% of the work required to make grub 
capable of loading a kernel from the DiskOnChip - just needs a few bugs 
fixed.




--
dwmw2




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Re: Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

[David Hamm]

<snip>
> Which boot loader should I use to boot the system from the flash?
> 
If you get the answer to that let me know.  I've tried Doc-LILO and Loadlin. 
I've yet to see it boot to linux from disk on chip.  I'm exhausted.  

 --
---------------------------------
David Hamm
Systems Analyst
Imaging Technologies Services Inc.
email: dhamm@itrepro.com
voice: 404-870-6663
---------------------------------


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Re: Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

[dr john halewood]

On Tuesday 06 February 2001 08:58, David Woodhouse wrote:
> You can leave the original firmware in place, which makes it pretend to be
> a BIOS-supported hard drive. So you can use any bootloader, although some
> versions of LILO have problems with the amount of memory that the firmware
> eats.

 I found that lilo < 21.4 would hang at boot with a 24Mb DOC2000. 21.5&6 both 
work fine with it. And the one that shipped with RH7 didn't even get as far 
as hanging on one of my development boxes whilst the one in 6.2 was fine (for 
some reason I've got a 15Gb hard drive attached to it).

cheers
john

p.s. off-topic really: can anyone recommend a place to get DOCs from in the 
UK? The last lot I tried (who M-Sys put us in contact with) took about 3 
months to ship a single chip...


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Re: Maybe FAQ, but I don't know te answer...

[Christer Weinigel]

dwmw2@infradead.org wrote:
>You can leave the original firmware in place, which makes it pretend to be 
>a BIOS-supported hard drive. So you can use any bootloader, although some 
>versions of LILO have problems with the amount of memory that the firmware 
>eats. We can also load Grub into the DiskOnChip in place of the original 
>firmware, and we've done about 90% of the work required to make grub 
>capable of loading a kernel from the DiskOnChip - just needs a few bugs 
>fixed.

Whre can I find that version of Grub?  I'm just playing around a bit
with a DiskOnChip module right now, and I hacked the stage1 loader
from the mtd/grub directory so that it can load etherboot and then
added a some very primitive DOC support to etherboot (it was available
and has a framework for serial consoles which works).

So now I load etherboot from the DOC and then scan the DOC for a tag
which identifies an etherboot nbi image and loads that.

If anyone is interested, I can probably clean up the sources a bit and
put it up on a website somewhere.

  /Christer


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