John's research

From WirelessAfrica
Revision as of 16:20, 13 August 2008 by Jhay (talk | contribs) (Start moving my docs to the wiki - Arm install)

Research is probably a bit wild.


Installing FreeBSD on a Avila/Pronghorn Metro ARM board

Gateworks Avila boards

Note! FreeBSD detects the mini-pci cards different from the labeled order on the PC board. It detects it in this order: J3, J1, J4, J2 So the card in J3 will be ath0...

ADI Pronghorn Metro boards

Note! FreeBSD detects the mini-pci cards in reverse order from the labeling on the PC board. So it will detect from PCI3, PCI2, PCI1 to PCI0. So the card in slot PCI3 will be ath0.


  • Redboot use 115200 baud, so use
  • > cu -l /dev/your-serial-dev -s 115200
  • Break RedBoot with ^C where it says you can. :-)
  • > ip -l 10.0.0.234/24 -h 10.0.0.1 # LAB C155
  • > ip -l 146.64.5.234/24 -h 146.64.5.1 # JHAY-LAB
  • > load boot2
  • On the ADI Pronghorn boards you might get an write error. They seem to lock the flash. Just unlock it. Look for the address in the error message and do something like this and do the fis create command again:
    • > fis free
    • > fis unlock -f 0x50060000 -l 0x20000
  • > fis create boot2
  • > fconfig
  • Change the "run script at boot" to true
  • Change the startup script to:
    • fis load boot2
    • go
  • Change the timeout to 3.
  • Change BOOTP enabled to false.
  • Enter a . on the next option to end fconfig. Choose y to save it.
  • > load -b 0x200000 kernel-avila
  • > go
  • Type <enter> at the shell prompt.
  • > ./writedisk disk-arm-7-20070315.tgz # Normally use the latest
  • > reboot
  • Reboot to make sure everything is working.