grub stuff

grub stuff

[Zhiwei Yu]

hi, John 

I am the one posting "Booting from DOC2000 with GRUB
Loader", and glad to see you still "fighting" grub. 
Now I'm using lilo instead. Although grub have a lot
of benefits, I can't make it work before deadline.:(
If you work it out, would u please give me some clue?

Here is my way to recover DOC chip.  I presumed that
you have an ethernet card on your board.  
1. Build a ramdisk with root fs, put nftl_format
inside it
2. use mknbi to make ramdisk bootable
3. setup a tftp server and bootp server on your
desktop
4. go to etherboot.sourceforge.net to download the
latest package, find out the bios for ethernet card
and write it into ethernet card.  After that you can
choose to boot from local or network.
5. boot from network, push your ramdisk to your SBC by
tftp server
You can now nftl_format your DOC.  It's a little
tricky to setup all of it. but quite useful for me who
don't have floppy and harddisk on the SBC.

For further information, pls refer to
etherboot.sourceforge.net.

Best Regards
Zhiwei Yu

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Re: grub stuff

[John Sutton]

Hi there

That's interesting!  I've been using netbooted diskless clients for some
years but have never bothered to actually put a bootrom in a network card -
 I just write the bootloader onto a floppy.  So I've no experience of
actually booting from a real bootrom, but what you are saying (if I've
understood correctly) is that a real bootrom on an ethercard always gets
first bite of the cherry at boot time?  Regardless of the boot order
you've configured in the BIOS setup screens? or the presence of a "grubbed"
DiskOnChip?

PS and very OT: After years of faffing about with proprietary packet
drivers supplied by ethercard manufacturers and/or hoping to find a
suitable packet driver on Russell Nelson's priceless www.crynwr.com, I
recently discovered rom-o-matic.net.  Take a look at that!  Oh dear, the
time I've been a wasting...

On Fri, 03 May 2002, Zhiwei Yu wrote:
> hi, John 
> 
> I am the one posting "Booting from DOC2000 with GRUB
> Loader", and glad to see you still "fighting" grub. 
> Now I'm using lilo instead. Although grub have a lot
> of benefits, I can't make it work before deadline.:(
> If you work it out, would u please give me some clue?
> 
> Here is my way to recover DOC chip.  I presumed that
> you have an ethernet card on your board.  
> 1. Build a ramdisk with root fs, put nftl_format
> inside it
> 2. use mknbi to make ramdisk bootable
> 3. setup a tftp server and bootp server on your
> desktop
> 4. go to etherboot.sourceforge.net to download the
> latest package, find out the bios for ethernet card
> and write it into ethernet card.  After that you can
> choose to boot from local or network.
> 5. boot from network, push your ramdisk to your SBC by
> tftp server
> You can now nftl_format your DOC.  It's a little
> tricky to setup all of it. but quite useful for me who
> don't have floppy and harddisk on the SBC.
> 
> For further information, pls refer to
> etherboot.sourceforge.net.
> 
> Best Regards
> Zhiwei Yu
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
> http://health.yahoo.com
-- 

***************************************************
John Sutton
SCL Internet
URL http://www.scl.co.uk/
Tel. +44 (0) 1239 711 888
***************************************************

Re: grub stuff

[Jasmine Strong]

On Friday, May 3, 2002, at 04:58 PM, John Sutton wrote:
> That's interesting!  I've been using netbooted diskless clients for some
> years but have never bothered to actually put a bootrom in a network 
> card -
>  I just write the bootloader onto a floppy.  So I've no experience of
> actually booting from a real bootrom, but what you are saying (if I've
> understood correctly) is that a real bootrom on an ethercard always gets
> first bite of the cherry at boot time?  Regardless of the boot order
> you've configured in the BIOS setup screens? or the presence of a 
> "grubbed"
> DiskOnChip?
>

Nnno.

It depends which order your BIOS does things in, and whether you have 
your
Grub set to extend the bootstrap int or the netboot int.  (If it's using
the netboot int, then it'll depend which order your BIOS loaded the ROMs
in.)

That said, as long as you have the grub second stage intact, there should
never be any need to do such things, as the grub command line will let
you boot the system any which way you like.  (If, like me, you're scared
of trashing your system by plugging and unplugging chips while the system
is running, then doc_loadbios should *always* be the *last* stage in the
formatting of a new DoC-  that way there will always be a working Grub.)

Jas.

Re: grub stuff

[Zhiwei Yu]

--- John Sutton <john@scl.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi there
> 
> That's interesting!  I've been using netbooted
> diskless clients for some
> years but have never bothered to actually put a
> bootrom in a network card -
>  I just write the bootloader onto a floppy.  So I've
> no experience of
> actually booting from a real bootrom, but what you
> are saying (if I've
> understood correctly) is that a real bootrom on an
> ethercard always gets
> first bite of the cherry at boot time?  Regardless
> of the boot order
> you've configured in the BIOS setup screens? 
First thing to clarify is that, my hareware colleague
finnally use the bios code from manufactory.  In order
to cut cost, he write it into system bios instead of
bootrom, although etherboot code should work.  The
code using now locates at d0000h as bios extension and
give you an prompt to choose boot from network or
local disk.
> or the
> presence of a "grubbed"
> DiskOnChip?
Correct, but I am sure that on my box not yours. It
may depend on your bios setting
> 
> PS and very OT: After years of faffing about with
> proprietary packet
> drivers supplied by ethercard manufacturers and/or
> hoping to find a
> suitable packet driver on Russell Nelson's priceless
> www.crynwr.com, I
> recently discovered rom-o-matic.net.  Take a look at
> that!  Oh dear, the
Thank you for your recommendation!!
> time I've been a wasting...
No more wasting time, I have to work on the lcd
stuff.:) 

Zhiwei

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com