NetBSD/pmppc Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ is very much a work in progress. If you have additional information, questions, or answers, send mail to port-pmppc@NetBSD.org.

General Problems/Questions

• How do I boot NetBSD?
• Can NetBSD configure the PCI devices?
• Can the NetBSD kernel be flashed?

Additional information is also available:

• Diskless NetBSD HOW-TO.
• NetBSD Serial Port Primer
• General NetBSD Documentation - for questions not specific to NetBSD/pmppc.

General Problems/Questions

How do I boot NetBSD? (top)

NetBSD is booted over the network. You need two things, a TFTP server to load the kernel image and an NFS server for the file systems.

The NetBSD kernel has been relocated for loading at address 0x40000, so the Artesyn monitor has to be set up for this load address. Use the monitor commands nvdisplay and nvupdate to configure the boot parameters, and boottftp to boot.

Can NetBSD configure the PCI devices? (top)

NetBSD can configure the PCI devices if the option PCI_NETBSD_CONFIGURE is used. This may not work if the firmware also configures the devices. The firmware configuration can be turned off using nvdisplay.

Can the NetBSD kernel be flashed? (top)

Yes, the same kernel that is booted over TFTP can be flashed. The steps are:

• Get the kernel into memory:

   tftp_get kernel-name 40000

• Write it to flash. The size of the kernel is reported by tftp_get. Use it in the command to copy from RAM to flash:

   flashblkwr 40000 70000000 size

• Use nvdisplay to make sure that CopyToLoadAdr is set, that RomBase=70000000, and that RomSize is large enough to copy the whole kernel.

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