In this section, the NeTTrom parameters will be explained in detail. It is
meant more as a reference guide; for most people, the examples in the `Using
the firmware' chapter should be sufficient. The parameters are grouped into
several sections that are logically connected - the same way they are listed
printenv command is used.
Eth0 is the 10-base-T network interface on the back of the NetWinder. If the minikernel is to do any networking (such as fetching a kernel, or booting from an NFS server), then the interface must be assigned an IP address and netmask in this section. Either static addresses or dynamic (DHCP) can be used.
The first parameter,
netconfig_eth0, determines how the interface
is configured. The default setting of
disk means that the
interface is not configured (inactive). A setting of
that the address and netmask are specified in the
parameter. A setting of
dhcp indicates that DHCP is to be used to
configure the interface.
...dhcp parameters should be described here...
eth0_ip parameter contains the network address and netmask
value for the eth0 interface. The two values should be separated by a
slash, and the netmask should be expressed as a single number (IPv6 style).
This field is ignored unless
netconfig_eth0 is set to
Eth1 is the 10/100-base-T network interface. It has a set of parameters that function identically to those of the eth0 interface. Consult the previous section for a full description.
These options allow the firmware to contact boot servers (TFTP and NFS) that
are not on the same subnet as the NetWinder. Issue the command
route1 with no additional arguments for some examples of how to set it
up. This feature has not been widely tested.
The bootloader can load an initial ram disk out of the flash memory. One common use for this feature is to provide a `rescue' filesystem that can be used to restore the hard disk, without needing to set up an NFS server and a TFTP server.
initrd parameter can be set to either
flash. In the latter case, the bootloader searches the flash
memory for a compressed ram disk and arranges for it to be booted as the
The other initrd options are not implemented as of this writing.
This section determines how the NetWinder will fetch its kernel. The first
kernconfig, determines which method will be used to fetch
the kernel. It can be set to one of
kernconfig is set to
fs, which stands for
`filesystem'. In this case, the values of the parameters
kernfile determine the device and name of the kernel file. The
bootloader will look on the specified device and try to load and execute the
specified filename. The file should be a valid linux kernel.
Prior to the 2.0 firmware series, the kernel was stored in raw form on a
dedicated partition (ie. without a filesystem). Support for this `legacy'
method is available by setting
In this case, the kernel is loaded directly from the device specified by
kerndev. There is no filename. Obviously, the root device must be
on a different device in this case. Most people won't want to use this
The third option is to fetch a kernel via TFTP from a server on the network.
tftp enables this option, which also
requires that a network interface be configured (see the section above).
The ip address of the TFTP server should be stored into the
kerntftpserver parameter, and the filename (on the server) should
be stored in
The multiple file name fields are provided to make it easy to switch between
network and local booting. Once configured, only the
parameter needs to be changed.
rootconfig parameter specifies how the NetWinder will obtain
its root filesystem. The possible values are either
disk for local
nfs for network booting.
rootconfig parameter is set to
disk, then the
boot device specified by the
rootdev parameter will be used.
Typically the root device would be
/dev/hda1 or some other hard
drive partition. However, any devices that were detected at boot-up may be
legitimately specified. For example, a ZIP drive attached on the parallel
port could be used as the boot device.
Network booting is enabled by setting
rootconfig to the value
nfs. The IP address and the export name for the NFS server should
be specified in the
rootpath parameter (a typical example would be
cmdappend parameter can be used to specify additional options
to be passed to the kernel. The contents of this field will be appended to
the kernel command line, without any checking done. One common use is to
pass special arguments to the
passwd parameter can be used to password-protect the firmware
settings, to prevent unauthorized haxors (or young children) from messing
with your configuration settings.