Configuring the RedBoot Environment

Once installed, RedBoot will operate fairly generically. However, there are some features that can be configured for a particular installation. These depend primarily on whether flash and/or networking support are available. The remainder of this discussion assumes that support for both of these options is included in RedBoot.

Target Network Configuration

Each node in a networked system needs to have a unique address. Since the network support in RedBoot is based on TCP/IP, this address is an IP (Internet Protocol) address. There are two ways for a system to “know” its IP address. First, it can be stored locally on the platform. This is known as having a static IP address. Second, the system can use the network itself to discover its IP address. This is known as a dynamic IP address. RedBoot supports this dynamic IP address mode by use of the BOOTP (a subset of DHCP) protocol. In this case, RedBoot will ask the network (actually some generic server on the network) for the IP address to use.

The choice of IP address type is made via the fconfig command. Once a selection is made, it will be stored in flash memory. RedBoot only queries the flash configuration information at reset, so any changes will require restarting the platform.

Here is an example of the RedBoot fconfig command, showing network addressing:

RedBoot> fconfig -l
Run script at boot: false
Use BOOTP for network configuration: false
Local IP address: 192.168.1.29
Default server IP address: 192.168.1.101
DNS server IP address: 192.168.1.1
GDB connection port: 9000
Network debug at boot time: false  

In this case, the board has been configured with a static IP address listed as the Local IP address. The default server IP address specifies which network node to communicate with for TFTP service. This address can be overridden directly in the TFTP commands.

The DNS server IP address option controls where RedBoot should make DNS lookups. A setting of 0.0.0.0 will disable DNS lookups. The DNS server IP address can also be set at runtime.

If the selection for Use BOOTP for network configuration had been true, these IP addresses would be determined at boot time, via the BOOTP protocol. The final number which needs to be configured, regardless of IP address selection mode, is the GDB connection port. RedBoot allows for incoming commands on either the available serial ports or via the network. This port number is the TCP port that RedBoot will use to accept incoming connections.

These connections can be used for GDB sessions, but they can also be used for generic RedBoot commands. In particular, it is possible to communicate with RedBoot via the telnet protocol. For example, on Linux®:

% telnet redboot_board 9000
Connected to redboot_board
Escape character is ‘^]’.
RedBoot>  

Host Network Configuration

RedBoot may require three different classes of service from a network host:

Depending on the host system, these services may or may not be available or enabled by default. See your system documentation for more details.

In particular, on Red Hat Linux, neither of these services will be configured out of the box. The following will provide a limited explanation of how to set them up. These configuration setups must be done as root on the host or server machine.

Enable DNS server on Red Hat Linux

First, ensure that you have the proper RPM package, caching-nameserver installed. Then change the configuration (in /etc/named.conf) so that the forwarders point to the primary nameservers for your machine, normally using the nameservers listed in /etc/resolv.conf.

Make sure the server is started with the command:
# service named start
and is started on next reboot with the command
# chkconfig named on
Finally, you may wish to change /etc/resolv.conf to use 127.0.0.1 as the nameserver for your local machine.

Verification

Once your network setup has been configured, perform simple verification tests as follows: