Linuxbios: Booting linux from flash IDE drive on epia boards?

[David Hendricks]

Etherboot can boot a kernel from an IDE device as well as a floppy or over
a network.

Have you checked the freebios/HOWTO/EPIA file? That should help get you
started. To get it working from an IDE device, The basic procedure should
go something like this:
0) Consider investing in a BIOS Savior device in case something goes wrong.
1) Modify the epia.config.example file to use IDE--Add the line "option
BOOT_IDE=1" somewhere in there, maybe some other stuff Sone Takeshi or
Andrew Ip or some others around here can help you with. Here's an old one
from Sone that I haven't defiled:
http://www.flagen.com/~sc/linux/lb/epia/epia.config.sone
2a) Download Etherboot ( etherboot.sf.net ) Build a working etherboot
payload (Should be ide_disk in the etherboot/src/bin directory after you
'make' etherboot).
2b) Build LinuxBIOS with that python command described in
freebios/HOWTO/EPIA and run 'make' in the target directory to build your
romimage.
2c) Burn the romimage to the EPIA flash chip using the flash_write utility
(Under /freebios/util/flash_and_burn).
3) Build kernel for EPIA.
4) Use mkelfImage ( ftp://lnxi.com/pub/mkelfImage/ ) on your kernel image.
5) Format your IDE device with FAT
6) Write your elfImage to the IDE device like so: dd if=elfImage
of=/dev/your_compactflash_device bs=1024 seek=4
7) Test it out, fail, and have someone with more expertise explain this to
you in further (And more correct) detail :)

If all else fails, you can try this ROM:
http://www.flagen.com/~sc/linux/lb/epia/epia-ide.andrew.rom . It's an old
one from Andrew Ip, the l33t master. If it doesn't work, at least you can
use it as a proof of concept to figure if this whole ordeal is worthwhile
for your needs.

> Hello, (second try)
>
> I'm planning to build my own car mp3 player on a PC basis and now found
> out that the VIA epia boards seem to be supported by linuxbios.
> I'd love to boot my mp3 player via linuxbios to get the music playing
> asap... unfortunatly the linuxbios-docs are not very userfriendly - I
> understand that it's possible to boot the epia boards via etherboot, but
> can i also load a kernel from IDE devices, e.g. a compact flash card
> mounted into a IDE compact flash drive?
> If not - is there any other way to load a linux-kernel really FAST in a
> EPIA standalone (car-) system?
>
> Would you recommand a special board, such as the EPIA-V8000, or are they
> all working well?
>
> Thanks a lot for your help,
>
>
> Hubert
> ---
> hubert at denkmair.de
>
>
>
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