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SCSI boot HOWTO for FlI4L
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Prerequisites

  • You must use FlI4L 2.x, older versions might work but this HOWTO will be slightly wrong. (At the time of this writing the current version is 2.0.8, I have updated this howto to reflect any changes for this version.)
  • Your SCSI adapter must have a bios that allows booting.
  • It is assumed that you already have got a working system booting from floppy disk that can access your SCSI harddisk.
  • It is also assumed that you have got a Linux system and are familiar with the tools on it.

Before we begin

All directories mentioned here are relative to the fli4l directory, e.g. '/home/myself/fli4l-2.0.8', so the directory 'src' in this context means '/home/myself/fli4l-2.0.8/src' etc.

You need to make changes to the rootfs, so please first familiarize yourself with the content of the 'src' subdirectory.

How to do it

  • Become root and change to the 'src' directory
  • Run './mount-rootfs.sh' to mount 'rootfs.img' under 'rootfs'.
  • Create the directory 'src/rootfs/lib/modules/2.2.22/scsi' (Where 2.2.22 is the version of the Linux kernel used in version 2.0.8 of fli4l, your kernel version may vary.)
  • Copy the files 'scsi_mod.o' and 'sd_mod.o' as well as the module for your SCSI adaptor (e.g. 'aha1542.o') from 'opt/files/lib/modules/2.2.22/scsi' to the just created 'src/rootfs/lib/modules/2.2.22/scsi' directory.
  • Copy the file 'mknod' from 'opt/files/bin' to 'src/rootfs/bin' and make it executable. (chmod +x mknod)
  • Edit 'src/rootfs/etc/rc' and add the following lines just before the comment reading 'get boot device', replacing 'aha1542' with the appropriate module for your SCSI host adapter.
                      
#------------------------------------------------------------------
# twm: load SCSI modules and create device nodes
#------------------------------------------------------------------
/sbin/insmod scsi_mod
/sbin/insmod aha1542
/sbin/insmod sd_mod

# create harddisk devices:

# now get information about partitions and build the nodes
cat /proc/partitions | grep "^ .* sd[a-z]" | sed -e 's/ \+/ /g;' |
while read line
do
  set $line
  echo "creating device node $4 ($1 $2)"
  /bin/mknod /dev/$4 b $1 $2 >/dev/null 2>&1
done
#------------------------------------------------------------------
                    
This loads the appropriate modules for accessing your SCSI disk and creates the devices for it. Make sure the path to 'mknod' is correct, otherwise you will get an error when the startup script tries to mount any SCSI devices later on.
  • Change back to the 'src' directory and make sure that you don't have any program (e.g. your editor or another shell) accessing the rootfs.
  • Unmount the rootfs with './umount-rootfs.sh'.
  • Call './compact-rootfs.sh' to create a new 'rootfs.gz' file in 'img'.
  • Disable the scsi support in 'config/scsi.txt', since it would only generate error messages when trying to load modules that are already loaded.

Now you can use the new rootfs to install FlI4L on a hard disk as described the FLI4L installation instructions.

(c) Copyright 2001-2004 by Thomas Mueller, all rights reserved



This document was generated using AFT v5.096

last updated: 2012-10-14 twm
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