Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 18:07:54 -0700 From: Aditya <aditya@grot.org> To: Eric Veraart <eric@monkey-online.net> Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: RLX System 324 Message-ID: <20020823010754.GA25258@mighty.grot.org> In-Reply-To: <3BD596BD.2E4EBE55@monkey-online.net> References: <3BD596BD.2E4EBE55@monkey-online.net>
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On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 06:11:41PM +0200, Eric Veraart wrote: > Does anyone have experience with the RLX System 324 and Serverblade > cards? (http://www.rlxtechnologies.com/product/benefits/manage.html) > Seems real sweet, but I can't find anything about FreeBSD compatibility. Following up on a pretty old message, but in case anyone is interested, I just got FreeBSD running on a RLX System 324, Transmeta Crusoe 633Mhz blade[3] and learned a few interesting things (RLX sent me a document "Installing FreeBSD on a RLX Blade"[1] that details how to use PXE -- essentially a more detailed version of the "FreeBSD Jumpstart Guide"[2]). Please let me/freebsd-isp know if you learn anything new and exciting about the RLX blades as they are a very compelling, dense, server solution. A few notes: - the version of the BIOS I have has an option Advanced->Console Redirection->Remote Console that should be set to Off -- this forces the serial console output to go to the RJ45 serial port on the front of the blade (make sure you set console=comconsonle in /boot/loader.rc). The other settings are as outlined in [1] under "Prepping the RLX Server Blade" are correct -- stuff like: Advanced->Console Redirection->Com Port Address = On-board COM1 ->Baud Rate = 9600 ->Console Type = PC ANSI ->Flow Control = None ->Continue C.R. after POST = On - the CPU Type in Kernel for the Transmeta Crusoe is "i586" (a Pentium III will run with just i686 in the Kernel but the Crusoe won't) - I managed an install using PXE as well as simply removing the 2.5" drive and installing onto it in a laptop... - all three ethernet interfaces are fxp and work at 100baseTX/full-duplex - unfortunately, there is no nice cable solution for the RJ-45 sio0 serial ports which are on the front of each blade. RLX had this to say when I asked about connecting to the "internal" serial console on each blade from the master blade using the "rlxconsole" utility under RedHat which would avoid the necessity of having physically wired RJ-45 consoles on each blade: > Unfortunately, you will not be able to use rlxconsole on any other OS than > our supported ones (Redhat Linux and Windows 2000 Server). Serial console > redirection is actually an engineering effort that we had to develop for the > Control Tower Server and the client. We enhanced the serial driver in Linux > (serial.c) and added a client module (rlx_clientpm) to facilitate this > functionality. If you install xBSD on a client blade, you will not receive > any remote console redirection via Control Tower. We have only implemented > this functionality on our supported OS'es, Linux and Windows. it would be great if they provided a way to do that on other OS'. On the whole, other than the serial console thing, the unit is very nicely made, seems to function well, and the Master blade/Control Tower is pretty nice for RedHat and Win2000 blades -- I suppose if I had net-snmpd running, it probably could even retrieve some info from the FreeBSD blades. 1. I emailed support@rlx.com and told them I'd like to run FreeBSD and they sent me the document (I'm not sure it's entirely public as they don't want to give the impression that they "support" FreeBSD officially) 2. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pxe/ 3. dmesg with an install kernel shows: FreeBSD 4.6.2-RELEASE #0: Wed Aug 14 21:42:02 GMT 2002 murray@builder.freebsdmall.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/BOOTMFS Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz Timecounter "TSC" frequency 633361560 Hz CPU: Transmeta(tm) Crusoe(tm) Processor TM5600 (633.36-MHz 586-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineTMx86" Id = 0x543 real memory = 251592704 (245696K bytes) avail memory = 236609536 (231064K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc081c000. Preloaded mfs_root "/boot/mfsroot" at 0xc081c084. md0: Preloaded image </boot/mfsroot> 4423680 bytes at 0xc03e20b4 md1: Malloc disk Using $PIR table, 6 entries at 0xc00fdf60 npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1279, dev=0x0396) at 0.1 pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1279, dev=0x0397) at 0.2 isab0: <AcerLabs M1533 portable PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0 fxp0: <Intel Pro 10/100B/100+ Ethernet> port 0x1000-0x103f mem 0xfeb00000-0xfebfffff,0xfe900000-0xfe900fff irq 11 at device 9.0 on pci0 fxp0: Ethernet address 00:42:52:00:26:3b inphy0: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus0 inphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto fxp1: <Intel Pro 10/100B/100+ Ethernet> port 0x1040-0x107f mem 0xfec00000-0xfecfffff,0xfe901000-0xfe901fff irq 10 at device 10.0 on pci0 fxp1: Ethernet address 00:42:52:00:26:3c inphy1: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus1 inphy1: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto fxp2: <Intel Pro 10/100B/100+ Ethernet> port 0x1080-0x10bf mem 0xfed00000-0xfedfffff,0xfe902000-0xfe902fff irq 7 at device 11.0 on pci0 fxp2: Ethernet address 00:42:52:00:26:3d inphy2: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus2 inphy2: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto atapci0: <AcerLabs Aladdin ATA66 controller> port 0x10c0-0x10cf,0,0,0,0 at device 15.0 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 chip1: <AcerLabs M15x3 Power Management Unit> at device 17.0 on pci0 orm0: <Option ROMs> at iomem 0xc0800-0xc17ff,0xc1800-0xc27ff,0xc2800-0xc37ff,0xc3800-0xc47ff,0xdd000-0xdffff on isa0 fdc0: ready for input in output fdc0: cmd 3 failed at out byte 1 of 3 atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0 sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A, console sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A ppc0: parallel port not found. ad0: 9590MB <IBM-DJSA-210> [19485/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA66 no B_DEVMAGIC (bootdev=0) Hopefully this is of use to someone... Thanks, Adi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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