Zeroshell running on Via Eden FX5621 with Agere 10/100/1000

[aknopak]

Hi all,

First of all, thanks for a great tool/platform/appliance!

I have managed to get the Agere et131x interfaces working on a Via Eden FX5621 unit.

The way I did this may be of interest, I essentially turned the box itself into a development platform with a bit of a hack. It’s by no means a clean solution, but it is convenient and I guess it will work for adding any module or kerneloption.

I copied the CF image to a 2G flash card so I could create an extra partition for a writeable copy of the read-only part of the filesystem.

I then linked /lib/modules, /usr and /sbin to the new filesystem and installed binutils, libs and gcc in the new file system. Next I mounted a 2G USB stick and copied the linux sources on it (you need at least 1G).

I then was able to compile and install the et131x module.

Finally I made sure the new filesystem is made availabe and the module is loaded before the ethernet interfaces are configured by using the pre-boot option, and it works 😉

I can share the image and/or procedure in case anyone is interested, just let me know.

Thanks,

Regards, Anne

[aseques]

A couple of things:

How did you manage that? I mean setting the development environment. I’ve been trying to setup that for a long, and never really succeed.

The other thing is the quality of this hardware. We bought a couple of these devices after hearing the good reviews from the FX5620, at this time those boxes are locked in the cupboard due to the bad quality of drivers.

This morning I compiled the lastest kernel 2.6.32 and enabled the et131x (on debian voyage) the nic is locking after downloading only about 20 MB. After that is reset and working again, but not a solution.
I’d recommend you to test (something like using iperf on a couple machines) before putting this into production.

Hope to heard more from this, altough I lost the hope in this board long ago.

BTW, I’m very interested in your development image, are you able to share it somehow?

Thanks in advance

[aknopak]

Hi,

I am uploading the image to an ftp server, I’ll PM you the URL. The image is ~454MB (bzip2).

If you look at the pre-boot script you’ll see how it works, I guess that’s the main trick, apart from creating the extra space on the flash. The pre-boot script replaces links to the read-only system in the ramdisk filesystem with links to the new writeable system dirs.

After creating a writeable copy of the system on the new partition, I installed gcc, binutils and glibc. Next I connected a 2G USB drive to the appliance, mounted it, and copied the linux and et131x driver sources to it. Note that you need 1 GB at the very minimum, the sources are huge! At this point I was able to compile the et131x module and add it to the system (the USB stick is no longer needed, only when compiling new stuff).

About the stability of the hard- and software, that’s interesting. I haven’t used the Zeroshell for anything serious yet, I haven’t noticed any issues uploading files to the box over the gigabit interface.

One issue I did find is that the driver doesn’t properly report the linkstate. It will say ‘linkstate unknown’, whether the link is up or down. Since the failover features use reachability information and not link state per se, it’s not necessarily a show-stopper, but it isn’t very nice either.

Let me know how you get on with the image,

Regards, Anne

[yiannisp79]

I’m very interested in your development image, are you able to share it somehow?

Thanks in advance

[aknopak]

For anyone interested in downloading the image, it is availabe on demand on my company’s ftp server. Send my the IP you will be connecting from so I can allow it through our firewall.

The image is ~432 MB compressed.

[ppalias]

Wouldn’t it better be uploaded to a file sharing host, like rapidshare? I have a premium account, so I can upload it without too much fragmentation.

[aknopak]

That would be perfect, if you send me instructions, I will upload the file.

[ppalias]

http://www.rapidshare.com/
It has all the info you need.

[aknopak]

Mmm… It doesn’t work, probably the site is too busy. I’ll try it a few times, I’ll keep you posted.

[aknopak]

Ahem… The max filesize for Rapidshare is 200 MB 😳

I have uploaded the file to my Google docs page: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0oo8Fiyq3gtZmFmOTNkYmMtMWYwNC00ZTljLWI5MWItY2Y3MGQ1Mjg1YzIz&hl=en

[ppalias]

You could split the file before uploading it. Anyway, I am downloading it now and I can upload it to rapidshare as well.

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