Thu Dec 6 21:42:16 PST 2001

Several CDs later…

mount load -r -b 0x8c210000 /boot/zImage load -v -r -b 0x8c400000 /boot/initrd.gz exec -c "mem=16M init=/busybox /etc/profile"

It’s possible that the RedBoot/ECOS booter doesn’t like kernel sizes <1M for some reason. The new kernel I built the loader didn’t want to load it with load /boot/vmlinuz, claiming some kind of "backwards seek" error which seemed odd. But it seemed to like the zImage a lot better.

But even this doesn’t work correctly, as when I got it booting, the kernel had issues in that it couldn’t find any consoles to attach a root shell to after bringing up the kernel. It could be that that dist of the kernel is missing some of the drivers for the serial port and/or Maple bus.

I’m becoming increasingly inclined to give the NetBSD code a try since it’s a bit fresher. They don’t have a nice prepackaged system like I’ve found for the Linux people, but their group is a little more active and they even have Jason Thorpe working from time to time on it, and I know he’s pretty good. He worked for CS support at OSU when I was there once upon a time.