Subject: ARMLinux on Brutus problems and angelboot (long)

From: Zsolt Kiraly <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:04:27 +0000

Hi there,

I got Deborah Wallach's port of ARMLinux for Brutus (SA-1100 eval
platform), but I have not had any luck running it so far. I wonder if
somebody could give me some tips.

Here is what's happening. My host computer is a pc, with a PII300,
running RedHat 5.1. I also dual boot into Win98. I have two free serial
ports, so I connect ttyS0 to serial3 on the brutus, and ttyS1 to J22,
whatever it's called.

I compiled the angelboot program on my machine, but I'd like to use the
precompiled kernel for now. It would be a lot better if I could get
brutus on-line with that, and then worry about x-compiling stuff.

I can get the Angel debug message fine when resetting brutus. Then I run
the boot-brutus script, and everything seems fine, it downloads the
kernel image, and the ramdisk image. It says "Starting...", and exits.
In the meantime, I am still connected to J22 on the brutus, because
that's where all the kernel startup messages are supposed to come, but
nothing comes. I reconnect to serial3, and nothing. Noting on the
brutus' screen either. So it's retty obvious the linux did not start up
on brutus.

Then I reset the board, but now nothing comes through on ttyS0. When
I switch ttyS1 to serial3 on the brutus, and reset again, I get the
Angel debug message. I switch ttyS0 back, and reset, I get nothing.
I run boot-brutus again on ttyS0, and it again acts as if it works. So
it seems that when angelboot exits, it leaves the port it used in an
unusable state, but when I run it again, it resets the port, and it
works again.

Could it be that angelboot never actually downloaded the images, it just
acts as everything is fine, but then everything is really not fine ?

Hmm. I'd like somebody who knows angelboot to answer this. Can the
angelboot included in the brutus linux distribution be compiled and run
on a PII running Linux ? I know it was intended for an Alpha
workstation, but I do not have access to that. My project can't spend
$5000 - $8000 to make a $2500 piece of equipment to run.

Also, I had to make some minor, I think inconsequential changes in
angelboot to get it to compile: in lines 253 through 256 of angelboot.c
there are shift instructions. The amount to shift by is specified in
decimal, but the value to shift was hex. The compiler complained about
being out of radix on the third one, where I had to shift by 8 (dec) So
I just changed everything in those lines to hex: 0x18 for 24, 0x10 for
16, 0x08 for 8, and 0x00 for 0. This out of radix thing did not come up
anywhere else, but can someone shed light on this ? Should I change all
the shift by values to hex everywhere else ?

So, anybody has any ideas ? Dave Rusling ? I believe you provided the
angelboot to Debby ?

Thanks,

Zsolt

unsubscribe: body of `unsubscribe linux-arm' to [email-masked]

---

From: "Zsolt Kiraly" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:59:09 -0700

Thanks for the reply Debby, I appreciate your help.

Yes, ttyS0 works. I can get the Angel debug messagethough it after reboot of
the pc. It's only after running boot-brutus that it goes south. But it could
be the speed issue. But if the speed is wrong I think I should get garbage
instead of nothing. I will definately check for that. But I still don't get
the kernel boot-up messages on the other port, nor do I get any prompt on
the brutus LCD.

When I run boot-brutus the second time, and listen to the same port at the
same time, angelboot gives errors, but at least I can see that data is
transmitted and something is happening. And yes, data is transmitted every
time I run boot-brutus. I guess it resets the port or something.

Looking at the angelboot source, I think it checks if it gets a reply, but
does not check what the reply is, or if it is valid.

Also, I could not find the tip program for linux, so I'm just using 'cat <
/dev/ttyS0', 'cat < /dev/ttyS1' and 'cat > /dev/ttyS0', or at least trying
to. I can get the Angel debug message with 'cat < /dev/ttyS0'. Maybe I
should try some program like minicom ? Does anyone know how to configure
minicom for this sort of thing ?

Thanks,

Zsolt

-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Wallach <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: ARMLinux on Brutus problems and angelboot (long)

I don't understand this part of the message.  You're saying that you're
switching cables between resets and that you never see the angel boot
message through ttyS0 only through ttyS1?  Have you ever seen it through S0
(ie do you know for sure that that serial port works)?  Have you tried
explicitly setting the parameters for ttyS0 when you connect to counteract
whatever angelboot does (it probably sets it to raw, etc)?  I don't think
it makes any effort to reset the line when it's done...

I believe that angelboot won't proceed if it's getting no response back,
but I forget.  You could check the source.  I don't think it checks whether
or not the response back is the right response.

-Debby

PS  Make sure the lines are set at the right speed (I think the debug
messages on serial port 1 come out at 9600 baud but the login prompt should
come at 38400).

---

From: "Zsolt Kiraly" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:04:13 -0700

It's entire possible that everything works fine, and I am just not using the
proper program to communicate throught the serial port. Debby suggested the
tip program, but so far I could not find it. Does someone know how to
configure minicom to do this ?

Thanks,

Zsolt

-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Wallach <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: ARMLinux on Brutus problems and angelboot (long)

-Debby