[XCSSA] Netvista booting (was: August Meeting Presentations?)

[xcssa@xcssa.org]

I got my patched 2.4.5 (IBM's patches + modified bootimg patches) kernel 
booting, and bootimg seems to work, except that when bootimg attempts to 
boot the new kernel the whole unit shuts off.  My best guess is that the 
kernel *should* work, but the BIOS in these damn things is interfering.  I 
found out that IBM has a custom kernel module in /IBM/DD for setting up a 
"reboot" device, but I'm not an kernel/assembly hacker to be able to 
disassemble this thing to see what's going on.  I'd be happy to provide 
patches to a stock 2.4.5 kernel if anyone wants to continue down that road.

As far as I can tell, I can't boot a 2.6 kernel, otherwise I'd just use 
kexec, though I'm not sure if I'd fare any better.  There is supposedly a 
way to make custom firmware and bootloader (according to IBM documentation), 
but I can't find any software to do it.  Unfortunately, unlike other N2200s, 
these turbolinux based units don't have the ability to specify the kernel 
image and arguments -- it's in the firmware, which, as I mentioned, you're 
supposed to be able to customize ;-)

That debian based thingy is just too non-useful for me, and I don't have the 
kind of time it takes to roll a mini distro of my own.  I've been trying to 
boot DSL, but it requires a lot of boot arguments and initrd, hence the 
effort with bootimg (which would have been infinitely useful had it worked). 
  Next I'm going to try decompressing the initrd image and copying that to 
the flash card and modify the init scripts to change the command line 
arguments that DSL expects, which should be possible through /proc.

If not, looks like I'm just going to have to keep it wired as an LTSP 
terminal :(  I've already spent way too much time on this according to my 
wife :-P

Nick

xcssa-admin@xcssa.org wrote:
> xcssa-admin@xcssa.org wrote:
> 
>> on the topic of presentations.. Is anyone going to come show off these 
>> cool new IBM Netfinity N2200 thin client's that everyone's so excited 
>> about playing with?
>>     http://www.bluetrait.com/archive/2005/07/30/ibm-thin-clients/
> 
> 
> I'm working on getting a hand patched kernel with the old bootimg stuff 
> working so I can boot anything with an initrd image and any command line 
> options, but not there yet.  Would help to be a kernel hacker about now ;-)
> 
> Nick
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