Re: Linux host problems

[Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov>]

Peregrine McGehee wrote:
> Hi Maren,
>
> What sort of boot problems are you seeing when you use
> a Linux host?
>
> > - we still boot our iocs (vxWorks) from a solaris machine, even if we
> > don't use solaris for much else anymore (booting from a Linux
> > host isn't reliable/working)

I can't speak for Maren, but I do know that there was a problem with the 
standard vxWorks bootRom code's use of FTP.

There are two TCP sockets involved in an FTP file transfer, a command 
socket and a data socket, and the bootRom doesn't actually close its 
data socket before sending "QUIT" through the command socket, which is 
apparently not legal according to the official FTP spec.

Prior to Solaris 9, the Sun version of ftpd didn't mind which order you 
did those operations in, but other ftpd implementations don't like it. 
Sun switched to a different ftpd in Solaris 9, and we found we couldn't 
boot any of our IOCs after that particular OS upgrade until we reverted 
the ftpd back to the Solaris 8 binary (which runs perfectly well under 
Solaris 9).  They also broke their tftp server, but the Red Hat Linux 
one works perfectly well so I just switched to using that instead.

My guess is that JACH are hitting the same problem when trying to boot 
from Linux.  There is a fix to the bootRom code (see the patch below), 
but you have to reprogram all your IOC bootroms to the patched version 
to be able to use it.  An alternative would be to look for a different, 
more lenient implementation of ftpd.

- Andrew

This patch modifies the <tornado>/target/config/all/bootConfig.c file:

Index: bootConfig.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/phoebus/TORNADO5/cvsroot/config/all/bootConfig.c,v
retrieving revision 1.2
retrieving revision 1.3
diff -u -r1.2 -r1.3
--- bootConfig.c        12 Mar 2003 22:53:28 -0000      1.2
+++ bootConfig.c        22 Jan 2004 21:18:42 -0000      1.3
@@ -2492,11 +2492,11 @@

        while ((read (fd, command, sizeof (command))) > 0);
+       close (fd);

        if (bootFtp)
            (void) ftpCommand (errFd, "QUIT",0,0,0,0,0,0);
        }

-    close (fd);
     close (errFd);
     return (OK);

@@ -2510,5 +2510,6 @@

        while ((read (fd, command, sizeof (command))) > 0);
+       close (fd);

        if (bootFtp)
            {
@@ -2520,6 +2521,7 @@
        {
        char buf [100];
        int errBytesRecv = fioRead (errFd, buf, sizeof (buf));
+       close (fd);

        if (errBytesRecv > 0)
            {
@@ -2530,7 +2532,6 @@
            }
        }

-    close (fd);
     close (errFd);

     return (ERROR);


--
Podiabombastic: The tendency to shoot oneself in the foot.