Which rootfilesystem should I use on booting MBX860?

Which rootfilesystem should I use on booting MBX860?

[Masahide Tomita]

Hi,

I'm now trying to boot Hard Hat Linux on MBX860 boad.
Building the kernel and booting it on MBX was successful, but I'm so
confused about usage of initrd and so on.

What I want to do is just running telnetd and/or ftpd on MBX (doesn't
matter on what device they are).

I'm using ramdisk.image from MontaVista, but that included unknown files
for modem, although MBX860 doesn't have modem. Size of initrd is limited
(and DRAM on MBX is limited to 16MB, too) to 4MB, so I can not put
everything for all commands to work properly like desktop Linux.

Options, which I can think of now, are:
  1. Use initrd to implement everything I want, which needs recompling of
commands and tools (I think).
  2. Use initrd to just boot the kernel, then mount PCMCIA (Compact Flash)
64MB as a hard drive, so I can put everything on it.

But, there are problems for each options:
  1. initrd is so small, and I can't really tell which files should be on it
for daemons to run correctly. I also don't know how to recompile tools to
run them without libraries.
  2. mount command doesn't work. And, I don't know what device name to use
to mount CF on MBX (I tried mount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 /mnt, but MBX said
"wrong filesystem ..." or something).

And Ether is not up. Command ifconfig doesn't work either.

Any information will be appreciated.

Thanks

Masahide Tomita

tomita@itl.nyc.co.jp


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Re: Which rootfilesystem should I use on booting MBX860?

[Dan Malek]

Masahide Tomita wrote:

> Building the kernel and booting it on MBX was successful, but I'm so
> confused about usage of initrd and so on.

I still believe the easiest thing to do is build up a small NFS
root file system for testing.  When it has what you want, just
copy it to a ramdisk.

> I'm using ramdisk.image from MontaVista,

I don't believe there is a ramdisk image provided in any MontaVista
kit, so I don't know where this came from.  There certainly isn't
anything provided for an 8xx.


> Options, which I can think of now, are:

At least you have options and can make trade offs :-).

> ...... I also don't know how to recompile tools to
> run them without libraries.

If you are using the complete set of tools, libraries and applications
from Hard Hat Linux, you don't need to recompile anything.

>   2. mount command doesn't work.

Yes, it does.  Use the one for the 8xx and use the proper libraries.

> And Ether is not up. Command ifconfig doesn't work either.

Huh?  Yes, it does.  There is a problem in the driver that it
doesn't shut down properly, but you can always bring it up and
reconfigure it.

One of the advantages of using everything from Hard Hat Linux is
the tools, libraries, and applications are all built and tested
to work together for a specific target.  Don't be mixing, matching,
and copying stuff around or you will just end up with a mess.  Install
what you need from the RPMs.

	-- Dan

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