This file contains instructions for the SiS 630 based mainboards. Unfortunately, there is a step in this HOWTO that could be hazardous. The hazards include (but are not limited to) 1) destroying your motherboard 2) hurting yourself 3) killing yourself Because of these hazards, you must take full responsibility if you decide to install LinuxBIOS following these procedures. Neither Los Alamos National Labs nor any lab personnel can be held responsible for any adverse consequences of your attempt to follow these procedures. WARNING: we assume you've built kernels, know how to open up your PC, and how to yank the flash part out while power is on and put in a different part. There is NO WARRANTY, express or implied, with this software. In fact, if you don't know what you're doing, and you get careless, you're going to end up with a nice paperweight instead of a motherboard, an emergency room bill, or a funeral service. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Now that we're done with the mandatory US legal jargon (how I hate lawyers ...) The mainboards that are "known good" are: Matsonic MS7308E Winfast 6300MAX Mainboards with SiS630 that we KNOW will not work are: Any ASUS (uses the wrong kind of flash part) Matsonic MS7308D (no Ethernet connector) Vendors we have experience with that work: www.aaronix.com Clueless vendors, who ship the wrong board: www.dknypc.com (we ordered MS7308E, they shipped MS7308D, but invoiced MS7308E) Vendors who might work: www.eurocomla.com (we don't know yet -- have not tried them) Linux distribution: RedHat 6.2 or later. We haven't tried anything else. They may all work fine. Other software notes: You MUST have 'as' version 2.9.5 or later. Recommended: you really ought to get a 32-DIP Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket for the flash part. This makes taking out flash and putting in Disk On Chip much easier. You need to have a target machine (the machine that runs LinuxBIOS) and a build machine (which will let you build LinuxBIOS). These can be one and the same machine. In this HOWTO we assume they're the same. We nevertheless refer to a 'build' machine and 'target' machine in case you want to use a different machine. Also, freebios and linuxbios still share the same source tree. We use the name 'linuxbios' where it makes sense, and 'freebios' otherwise. But they are the same source base. ---- The steps for loading linuxbios are simple: 0) get linux installed on your target machine 1) Get Linuxbios source from the sourceforge 2) get a 2.4.0-test12 kernel, patch it, then build it 3) config and build linuxbios 4) put a Disk On Chip into the flash socket 5) Burn the chip 6) hit reset. You're up. --- Step 0) Get Linux installed on your target machine. We have used RedHat 6.2, but any recent Linux distribution should work, such as Mandrake 7.0. Step 1) o You need to get linuxbios source. cd to the directory you want the source tree to be. Then: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.freebios.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/freebios login cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.freebios.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/freebios co freebios Step 2) o go to www.kernel.org and get linux-2.4.0-test12 o Once you have pulled this file down and untar'ed it, apply the proper patch from the freebios/src/kernel_patches directory. The patch is: linux-2.4.0-test12-sis630-linuxbios.patch-1 o Now copy config-2.4.0-test12.sis to .config, then make oldconfig make clean make dep make vmlinux You now have a kernel for linuxbios. We recommend as a test that you also make bzdisk And then try booting this kernel on the target to make sure it works. If you want, you can also install this kernel on the target machine, and install the modules as well, since you will need the Disk On Chip modules to burn the Disk On Chip part. Step 3: o You now need to figure out where you want to put your build images. DO NOT PUT THESE IN THE LINUXBIOS SOURCE TREE. You want to put them OUTSIDE THE TREE, so you can always cvs update and not lose any of your build directory. Linuxbios does all the builds in a single directory, much as BSD does. To build linuxbios requires a Makefile, a crt0.S file, and a ld script file. These are generated by a config tool located in freebios/utils/config The config tool is a Python program originally written by Dean Risinger of the ACL. To build the initial Makefile, assembly stub, and ld script, you need to build a config file (simple), run the config tool, cd to the build directory, and type 'make'. Here is a config file for the winfast 6300 # This will make a target directory of ./winfast # Note that this is RELATIVE TO WHERE YOU ARE WHEN YOU RUN THE # CONFIG TOOL. Make it absolute if you like target winfast # Leadtek WinFast 6300 MAX mainboard mainboard leadtek/winfast6300 # Enable Serial Console for debugging # It will come up at 115200,8n1 option SERIAL_CONSOLE # Enable MicroCode update and L2 Cache init for PII and PIII option UPDATE_MICROCODE option CONFIGURE_L2_CACHE # Use the internal VGA frame buffer device option HAVE_FRAMEBUFFER # Path to your kernel (vmlinux) # NOTE; you need a path to your test12 kernel here. linux /usr/src/linux-2.4.0-test12 # Kernel command line parameters commandline root=/dev/hda1 The target command names the build directory. The mainboard command names the mainboard. We have set options for a serial console which will get you linuxbios debug output via the serial port; updating microcode on the PIII (mandatory for coppermine!); configuring the L2 cache (harmless, leave it in); framebuffer init (leave it in if you want a console). You have to tell it where to find the vmlinux you build (the 'linux' command); and finally you need a commandline for now. That's the file. To run the config tool, you need two args: the first is the name of a config file, and the second is the (absolute) pathname of the freebios source tree. The config tool is NLBConfig.py. Make sure you use that and not LBConfig.py, the older version. Here's what it looks like when you run it. python NLBConfig.py winfast.config ~/src/bios/freebios winfast is not a directory. I know I should make this, but I'm too paranoid To fix this, type mkdir -p winfast then run this program again Note this first time, we got an error, since I forgot to make the 'target' directory. So, for the second run, I do the mkdir, then run the tool: mkdir -p winfast python LBConfig.py winfast.config ~/src/bios/freebios The output of the tool is: Will place Makefile, crt0.S, ldscript.ld in winfast Process config file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/mainboard/leadtek/winfast6300/Config Process config file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/northsouthbridge/sis/630/Config Added ram init file: northsouthbridge/sis/630/raminit.inc Process config file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/cpu/p5/Config Process config file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/cpu/p6/Config Process config file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/lib/Config Trying to create winfast/Makefile Trying to create winfast/ldscript.ld Trying to create winfast/crt0.S Check for crt0.S param file: /users/rminnich/src/bios/freebios/src/include/northsouthbridge/sis/630/param.h Adding include to crt0.S for this parameter file OK, all those messages are normal. Now we do a make: (for a full transcript, see later in the file) We now have three files to be loaded into the Disk On Chip. The first is called docipl. It is 512 bytes. The second is called linuxbios.strip, and is the binary image of the linuxbios that gets loaded into Doc. The third file is your kernel, and is stripped and compressed, vmlinux.bin.gz -rw------- 1 rminnich CIC-ACL 512 Dec 20 08:41 docipl -rwx------ 1 rminnich CIC-ACL 33494 Dec 20 08:41 linuxbios.strip* -rwx------ 1 rminnich CIC-ACL 756069 Dec 20 08:41 vmlinux.bin.gz* You're now ready to burn the Disk On Chip, but first .... Step 4) NOTE: BE ADVISED THAT THIS STEP CAN HURT OR KILL YOU! YOU ARE WORKING WITH A POWERED-ON COMPUTER AT THIS POINT. THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO BE OPENED UP, AND YOU NEED TO REMOVE A CHIP WHILE THE COMPUTER IS ON. IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE THIS TYPE OF WORK, DO NOT DO IT! WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT THIS STEP. BEFORE DOING THIS STEP WITH POWER ON, YOU SHOULD TRY IT WITH POWER OFF. Figure out if you're going to burn the DoC on the build or target machine. It has to be the machine with MTD modules. Open the machine (LEAVE THE POWER ON), yank the flash, and plug in the DoC. We recommend you practice this first with the power off. Make sure that whatever you do, you are not shorting things out. Avoid using a metal tool! NOTE: YOU CAN HURT YOURSELF AT THIS STEP. We can't take any responsibility for what happens to you here. If you haven't done this, or are not trained, or have a history of getting hurt by hardware, DON'T DO IT. Step 5) Run the following script: Run the burn_mtd script from util/mtd Here's how it looks when you run it: Step 6) Hit reset. Linuxbios should come up in a few seconds. If it doesn't work: 1) if you can, hook up a serial line to your target, settings 115200,8n1 and see what messages come out. If you can capture them, send them to linuxbios@lanl.gov with a description of your problem.