[ixp1200] Booting intel ixp boards from tftp

[Haiyong Xie]

ENP2505 board by Radisys is different from IXP Evaluation board in many
aspects.

First, ENP2505 does not have an embedded 82559 or 82559ER MAC,
which is used in IXP Evaluation system as a network interface to boot or
download programs from the TFTP or NFS server. This is the reason why you
can not boot the board with the TFTP server since ENP2505 does not have
such network interfaces. The four RJ45 ethernet ports are not used for
this purpose.

Boot manager is working. You can stop the board running Cygmon
automatically when you reboot the system. I am sure if system monitor is
working or not. Cygmon is modified to download the embedded operating
system kernel through the PCI bus. This is how cygmon is used to do.

There is no hardware reset switch on the board, so you can not reset the
board. However, you can 'reboot' the board using software utilities
provided by boot manager and cygmon. For instance, cygmon has a command
named 'go', you can use this command to start executing the
specified program from a specific address, like 'go c4000800'. In fact,
after cygmon knows the embedded Linux kernel has been downloaded to the
on-board RAM, it issues a 'go c4000800' command to start the kernel.

Hope the above information is helpful to you.


Haiyong Xie

359 Surge Building
UCR CA 92521
(909)787-2001


On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Gregory Prier wrote:

> Our lab has two intel IXP 1200 evaluation boards.  These fit in a standard PC
> (they have pci slots) and have serial access like an evaluation board.  The
> boards are made by RadiSys and have the part number ENP2505.  I have been trying
> for a few weeks to get them to boot linux via tftp and I haven't had any luck.
>
> When the board starts it immediately boots into Cygmon.  When HOST mode is
> enabled Cygmon then counts down and starts automatically booting linux.  At this
> point I get this error message:
>
> Failed to initialize TFTP transfer, check network connection and IP addr.
>
> When I am in FTP mode I immediately get this message:
>
> Press space bar to abort host download mode....
> Press space bar to abort host download mode....
>
> If I don't push space then this will continue forever.
>
> The bootoptions are set as follows:
>
> cygmon> bo
> [BootOptions]:
>   1 BOOTP/Manual (manual)
>   2 Local IP (131.179.187.21)
>   3 Remote IP (131.179.187.20)
>   4 Linux kernel file name (zImage)
>   5 Linux ramdisk file name (ramdisk_img.gz)
>   6 Linux kernel load offset (C4008000)
>   7 Linux boot command line string ()
>   8 Countdown to auto-boot linux (60)
>   9 Starting SDRAM offset for host PCI access (0 MB)
>  10 SDRAM window size for host PCI access (256 MB)
>  11 Linux download mode [1] 0=FTP 1=HOST
>  Enter option number (1 to 11), "q" to quit, "s" to save:
>
> 131.179.187.20 is a machine on the same ethernet segment as the ixp card.  It
> is running a tftp server that has been tested and seems to work fine.
> Furthermore, I can run tcpdump on 131.179.187.20 and the ixp card never tries
> to get anything from the tftp server.  It doesn't send any traffic onto the
> network, not even arp.
>
> I tried using the System Monitor mode on the board but this just hung when the
> board tried to boot.  I also can't get to the boot manager because Cygmon seems
> to immediately start up instead.  I can't find a way to make sure that the
> ethernet interfaces are up and that I have configured everything correctly
> before declaring the ROM bad and reflashing it.
>
> Specifically, my questions are:
>
> - What exactly is the "on-board 82559 (or 82559ER) Ethernet Interface"
> mentioned in the manuals?  Does this refer to all of the 4 RJ-45 jacks on the
> board or some jack that I don't have or don't see?  Since the board supposedly
> uses this for the tftp transfer I want to make sure that I am plugging the
> cables into the right jacks on the card.  Is there a specific jack that I am
> supposed to use?  I have tried all four and haven't had any luck yet.
>
> - Any idea why I can't get to the boot manager or the system monitor when
> booting the board?  Were these removes to make room for Cygmon?
>
> - Does any one know of a way to hard reboot the card from inside cygmon?  It
> would be a big help for testing.
>
> - Any idea why the board won't boot from the tftp server?
>
> - Has anyone seen better documentation on setting up the boards and what to do
> when they don't work?
>
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Greg Prier
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Greg Prier                              Previously:      A Mudder
> 3564 Boelter Hall                       Currently:       A Bruin working
> UCLA CA 90095                                            towards a PhD
> (310) 825-8899                          After that:      No idea
>
> "Hell, there are no rules here.  We're trying to accomplish something."
>                                                         Thomas Edison
>
>
>