3.5. Make the kernel and rootfs.gz available

3.5. Make the kernel and rootfs.gz available
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The next step is to make the kernel and rootfs.gz available to the router. There are two methods:

Boot the kernel from the CF card. This is reliable, straightforward and suitable for production environments. The main drawback is that you need to move the CF card to a different machine to upgrade the files. Once the router is up and running this may be overcomeby using tftp.
Boot the router from a PXE server. This is more complicated and relies on a PXE server to be up and running. The advantage is that the kernel and rootfs.gz do not have to be copied to the CF card each time a new version is available. This makes it suitable during development.

3.5.1. Boot from CF

The boot loader uses a configuration file syslinux.cfg to find the kernel and rootfs.gz. It also sets kernel parameters to use the serial port as a console and initialize the watchdog timer margin.

The commands below create the syslinux.cfg configuration file on the CF card.

mkdir -p $FLASH_MNT
sudo mount -t msdos $FLASH_PART $FLASH_MNT
  cat > /tmp/$$ <<EOF
DEFAULT linux
LABEL linux
 KERNEL linux
 APPEND initrd=rootfs.gz console=ttyS0,38400 root=/dev/ram0 boot=/dev/hda1,msdos rw scx200_wdt.margin=15
EOF
  sudo cp /tmp/$$ $FLASH_MNT/syslinux.cfg
  rm /tmp/$$ 
sudo umount $FLASH_MNT

3.5.1.1. copy kernel and rootfs.gz

The final step is to copy the kernel and rootfs.gz to compact flash. The CF card can then be inserted in the router.

sudo mount -t msdos $FLASH_PART $FLASH_MNT
 sudo cp $ROOTFS_FILE.gz $FLASH_MNT/rootfs.gz
 sudo cp $LINUX_DIR/arch/i386/boot/bzImage $FLASH_MNT/linux
sudo umount $FLASH_MNT

3.5.2. Boot from PXE server

The BIOS on the WRAP does not support PXE. This section presents a workaround that consists of three stages:

boot etherboot from CF;
etherboot loads pxelinux from the PXE server; and
pxelinux loads the kernel and rootfs.gz and starts the kernel

3.5.2.1. etherboot

Etherboot is a software package for creating images that can download code over an Ethernet network.

Download and compile etherboot for the Ethernet chip present in the router. The example below is for the NatSemi DP83816.

wget -P $DL_DIR http://etherboot.berlios.de/dist/etherboot-5.3.9.tar.bz2
tar -C $PRJ_DIR/bootldr -xvjf $DL_DIR/etherboot-5.3.9.tar.bz2
cd $PRJ_DIR/bootldr/etherboot-5.3.9/app
make ARCH=i386 bin/natsemi.zlilo

The configuration file syslinux.cfg contains two labels. The first label allows the user to boot from CF directly and is similar to the one described in Section 3.5.1, “Boot from CF”. The second label points the boot monitor to the ethboot binary. The commands below create this configuration file.

sudo mount -t msdos $FLASH_PART $FLASH_MNT
  sudo cp $PRJ_DIR/bootldr/etherboot-5.3.9/apps/bin/natsemi.zlilo $FLASH_MNT/ethboot
  cat > /tmp/$$ <<EOF
DEFAULT ethboot
TIMEOUT 10
PROMPT 1
LABEL linux
  KERNEL linux
  APPEND console=ttyS0,38400 root=/dev/ram0 initrd=rootfs.gz rw scx200_wdt.margin=15
LABEL ethboot
 KERNEL ethboot
 APPEND console=ttyS0,38400
EOF
  sudo cp /tmp/$$ $FLASH_MNT/syslinux.cfg
  rm /tmp/$$
  sync
sudo umount $FLASH_MNT

When etherboot starts, it does a DHCP request for an IP address and PXE filename. The file name that it receives will be pxelinux. It then uses the TFTP protocol to load and run this files. This implies that both a DHCP and a TFTP server need to be present on the network.

Popular daemons for TFTP and DHCP are tftpd and dhcpd. The ISC DHCP daemon dhcpd can be configured for PXE by adding the following section to an existing /etc/dhcpd.conf.

host siso {
    option root-path      "/home/tftp";
    hardware ethernet     00:0D:B9:00:78:90;
    fixed-address         10.0.1.1;
    if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "Etherboot" {
        filename "pxelinux.0"; 
    }
    host siso2 {
    option root-path      "/home/tftp";
    hardware ethernet     00:0D:B9:07:36:BC;
    fixed-address         10.0.1.1;
    if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "Etherboot" {
        filename "pxelinux.0"; 
    }
}

Restart dhcpd on the server.

ssh root@pxeserver /etc/init.d/dhcpd restart

3.5.2.2. pxelinux

PXElinux is part of the syslinux suite and downloaded in Section 3.3.2, “Boot Loader”. Instead of compiling syslinux (that boots from FAT), the PXE compatible binary needs pxelinux.0 to be generated.

cd $PRJ_DIR/bootldr/syslinux-2.11
make pxelinux.0

Copy pxelinux.0 to the server, and create a configuration file.

ssh pxeserver mkdir -p /home/tftp/pxelinux.cfg
ssh pxeserver chmod 555 /home/tftp /home/tftp/pxelinux.cfg
scp pxelinux.0 pxeserver:/home/tftp/

ssh pxeserver cat ">" /home/tftp/pxelinux.cfg/default <<EOF
SERIAL 0 38400
DEFAULT 1
TIMEOUT 30
PROMPT 1
LABEL 1
 KERNEL linux
 APPEND console=ttyS0,38400 root=/dev/ram0 initrd=rootfs.gz rw scx200_wdt.margin=15
EOF

3.5.2.3. copy kernel and rootfs.gz

Finally, copy the root file system and kernel to the TFTP server.

scp $ROOTFS_FILE.gz pxeserver:/home/tftp/rootfs.gz
scp $LINUX_DIR/arch/i386/boot/bzImage pxeserver:/home/ftp/linux

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