Architectures/ARM/Fedora 18 Beta/HighBank

Calxeda Energycore (HighBank)

The EnergyCore ECX-1000 Series is a family of SoC (Server-on-Chip) products that bring the power efficiency of ARM processors to the datacenter. The ECX-1000′s have an integrated 80Gb EnergyCore Fabric Switch, advanced power/systems management with the on-chip EnergyCore Management Engine, and a slew of I/O options.

For more information on the Calxeda EnergyCore processor, please visit their website.

Using Anaconda to install on Calxeda Energycore (HighBank)

The Calxeda Energycore (HighBank) system supports PXE-boot and may install Fedora using Anaconda and Kickstart. This guide will give you detailed instructions on how to perform the installation, including the HighBank-specific setup required to perform a PXE-boot and kickstart install.

Server Setup
How to set up the server (DHCP/TFTPBoot/PXE) is covered in other Fedora documentation, and is not specific to ARM, so it will not be covered in this document.

The ARM installation tree is included in the Fedora 18 ARM Beta release and can be found on Fedora Mirrors.

An example PXE-boot config file is:

menu title F18 Beta HighBank Boot Options

default Highbank-Install
prompt 1
timeout 100

label Highbank-Install
    kernel f18-highbank/vmlinuz-highbank
    initrd f18-highbank/initrd-highbank.img
    append console=ttyAMA0 ip=eth0:dhcp ks=http://<ServerPathToKickstartConfig>/F18-highbank.ks rd.shell

By default, this file should be placed in the pxelinux.cfg directory and named 01-<MAC Address>, all lower case, for example:

  MAC=00-50-43-9e-17-28 -> FileName=01-00-50-43-9e-17-28

however U-Boot will also search for alternate file names, including a hexidecimal representation of the system's IP address.

The command line optiopn "ip=eth0:dhcp" is required to perform a network-based install. Command line option rd.debug and rd.shell may be added to support debugging.

A copy of the kernel and initrd image files from the install tree in the yum repository, along with the kickstart config file, should be placed on the PXE/tftpboot server, i.e.,

 /tftpboot/f18-highbank/
   F18-highbank.ks
   initrd-highbank.img
   vmlinuz-highbank
   upgrade-highbank.img
   uImage-highbank
   uInitrd-highbank

The kickstart config file could reside elsewhere, but it was included here with the other images, just to keep things together. This implies that the tftpboot directory is also accessible via http.

Default Operation
The current version of U-Boot on Highbank defaults to using 'bootz' instead of 'bootm' for PXE-booting, therefore the 'raw' images need to be copied to the server. The version of U-Boot on other systems may have the opposite default (use U-Boot wrapped images). Both versions of the kernel and initrd are provided in the images/pxeboot directory of the install tree and may be copied to the server.

Please use this example F18-highbank.ks file as a base for test installations. By default it points to the public yum repository and install tree.

To boot to the PXE install image, interrupt the autoboot on the system and perform a PXE-boot. For convenience U-Boot provides a script can be used to PXE boot the system, for example:

  bootcmd_pxe=setenv bootfile ""; dhcp; pxe get; pxe boot

This can then be automatically performed on boot, or run manually, for example:

 run bootcmd_pxe

U-Boot should display the boot menu defined in the PXE config file for the system. Once the default is selected (or autoboots) the kickstart install should begin. This may take a long time, so please be patient. Depending on the system and network performance the installation may take more than an hour.

IMPORTANT NOTE
This will wipe out anything on the hard drive in order to perform the new installation. It is not interactive, and no prompts or warnings will be provided. Only run this on a 'scratch' system for installation testing.

Quick Setup Notes for using the public FTP server

Fedora provides the images on the Fedora secondary-arch mirrors, and on the master repository at:

 http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/test/18-Beta/Fedora/armhfp/os/images/pxeboot

These images can be used for quick testing of PXE configuration using the example kickstart file provided (above).