Subject: Hello world!

From: Mike Shaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 17:10:45 -0500 (EST)

Looks like I'm getting an Indy when I get back to Ottawa next week, so
I'd like to hear from others (hello?) as to what kind of work we're
looking at in the short term.

Since I don't grok assembler (my private shame), I don't know how much
help I'll be at the low-level system stage.  I'm quite interested in
working on userland stuff, and will gladly do any kernel mucking that
I can handle.  (And if someone wants to give me a crash assembly
course, well... =) )

I understand that we're looking to get a source repository out on the
'net, which would be a good start.  What are people planning to start
with first?  (I suppose talking to disks is a priority... =) )

Mike

-- 
#> Mike Shaver ([email-masked]) Ingenia Communications Corporation 
#>       Chief System Architect -- Head geek -- System exorcist        
#>                                                                     
#>   "Have you considered a life?  I hear they're quite affordable     
#>          these days." --- [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Ariel Faigon)
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 16:18:06 -0800 (PST)

:
:On Mar 14, 10:32am, Mike Shaver wrote:
:> Subject: Hello world!
:> Looks like I'm getting an Indy when I get back to Ottawa next week, so
:> I'd like to hear from others (hello?) as to what kind of work we're
:> looking at in the short term.
:>

The goals are:
	0) Complete the merge with mainstream Linux
	   (David left at 2.0.11 or so) which I assume
	   Ralf has already done or doing.

	1) Get the Indy to boot linux from a _local_ disk
	   Ralf and Miguel were looking into SILO here.

	2) Get gcc to work native of Linux/Indy

As Alistair said, David already got the WD SCSI driver to work
and he was booting to multiuser and even running GNU emacs
on his Linux Indy.  But this was done using:

	1) Cross builds (gcc-cross was running on IRIX 6.2
	   and producing Linux ELF-32 binaries).

	2) Booting was never local. It was always using the
	   ARC prom bootp command.

	3) The target Linux/Indy filesystems were NFS mounted.

Basically we need to mkfs.ext2(8) on the local Indy (as IRIX
supports XFS and EFS both of which are proprietary, Sigh)
It would be best to have a seprate disk (rather than a
partition which may disappear in case of human error)
Get SILO to work, get the latest gcc to work native
and we can start working on userland.

Asking David some questions might be a good idea too.
I'm not sure he is currently on the list, I'll ask
him if he's interested to join.

:>
:> I understand that we're looking to get a source repository out on the
:> 'net, which would be a good start.  What are people planning to start
:> with first?  (I suppose talking to disks is a priority... =) )
:>

Larry and I are working on setting up linux.sgi.com outside the
SGI firewall. My intention is to set up tcpwrappers so that only
the developers (Ralf, Miguel, Mike) and SGI people could login
and give you complete control of the machine. At which point
you can install ssh or whatever and start sharing sources.

The "official" initial post-David merged source tree should
come from Ralf.

-- 
Peace, Ariel

---

From: "David S. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 03:45:15 -0500

From: [email-masked] (Ariel Faigon)
   Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 16:18:06 -0800 (PST)

In all actuality I did have real Linux ext2 filesystems on my test
box, only the kernel was network obtained.  In fact the stock ext2
filesystem utilities can be compiled on non-Linux platforms out of the
box, they use GNU autoconf.  In fact this is what I did to get going
initially.

I still had to use IRIX fdisk to label the disk, but then from IRIX I
just ran the mke2fs program to make the ext2 filesystem.  Then I'd
boot Linux quickly using nfsroot, mount the ext2 filesystem I had just
created, and I constructed a partition by copying files over from the
nfs partition in this way.  It was a pain, but it worked and I was
more interested in seeing results than doing it right at the time. ;-)
Also the rapid pace at which I was making changes to libc which caused
all of the binaries on the partition to be unusable (because of a
change of symbols in the dynamic linker etc.) actually warranted this
scheme.

A boot loader is really needed though.  There are essentially two or
three approaches most ports take to this task:

1) If the machine provides a "BIOS" or ROM interface that the loader
   can use to access the raw disk to do I/O operations, the boot
   loader only needs to be very minimal.  It uses the ext2 filesystem
   library, teaches the library at init time to use functions which it
   provides to do I/O.  It will do so via the ROM interfaces.  Also,
   some knowledge of the disk labeling scheme is necessary as well.
   This is the scheme used by the Sparc port's boot loader, it is the
   easiest way to approach this problem and it does not lack any
   features.

2) The Alpha port sticks essentially a miniature kernel into the boot
   loader.  Although I dislike this scheme, I have been told that they
   do need to do things this way.  Pretty much the boot loader has
   full device drivers in it.

I'd suggest scheme 1, I am nearly positive the SGI proms provide all
the facilities necessary to do what I have described.  And if I
remember correctly the boot loader that Ralf is using on his SRM
machines does in fact do all of this.  It would be beneficial to go
and look at the available boot loaders already coded, I have a
sneaking suspician that someone willing to stare at all of the code in
those boot loaders can get the thing working on an INDY in say 5 or 6
days time with no prior knowledge.

If I am not on there now, please add me.  I'll listen in.

Right.

---------------------------------------------////
Yow! 11.26 MB/s remote host TCP bandwidth & ////
199 usec remote TCP latency over 100Mb/s   ////
ethernet.  Beat that!                     ////
-----------------------------------------////__________  o
David S. Miller, [email-masked] /_____________/ / // /_/ ><

---

From: "Alistair Lambie" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 11:24:41 +0000

On Mar 14, 10:32am, Mike Shaver wrote:
> Subject: Hello world!

Umm...I'm sure David got the SCSI stuff going....infact let's look back in my
Outgoing mailbox....Yup, here we go:

  WD93:Driver version 1.21 compiled on Jul 11 1996 at 07:19:23
  wd33c93-0: chip-WD22c93B microcode=0d
  scsi0 : SGI WD93
  scsi : 1 host
  Started kswapd v 1.2
    Vendor: SGI       Model: SEAGATE ST31230N  Rev: 0272
    Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
  Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
    Vendor: SGI       Model: IBMDSAS-3540      Rev: S47K
    Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
  Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0
  scsi : detected 2 SCSI disks total
  SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 2070235 [1010 MB] [1.0 GB]
  SCSI device sdb: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 1070496 [522 MB] [0.5 GB]
  sgiseeq.....
  eth0:......
  Partition check:
   sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
   sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
  Sending BOOTP.....

It was a little slow the first time, but he fixed that.  It understands SGI
partition tables.

Cheers, Alistair

-- 
Alistair Lambie					    [email-masked]
Silicon Graphics New Zealand				  SGI Voicemail: 56791
Level 5, Walsh Wrightson Tower,				    Ph: +64-4-802 1455
94-96 Dixon St, Wellington, NZ			  	   Fax: +64-4-802 1459