Timesys Getting Started Guide for Gizmo Explorer Kit


Contents

Introduction

This document will describe in detail the procedures for booting a Linux kernel image and mounting a root file system from a hard disk on the Gizmo Explorer Kit.

This guide was tested with the Gizmo Explorer Kit using the GRUB bootloader.

Please see the Additional Information section for instructions on using other bootloaders.

The following configurations are supported:

  • BIOS with Grub Bootloader (Non-UEFI)
  • BIOS with Grub2 Bootloader (Non-UEFI)
  • BIOS with SYSLINUX Bootloader

Prerequisites

Host Requirements

To properly boot a board using software from Timesys, your host machine must meet the following requirements:

  • Modern GNU/Linux Distribution. While you can use nearly any modern Linux distribution released in the last 24 months, Timesys recommends one of the following:
    • Ubuntu (Most recent release or LTS)
    • Fedora (Most recent release)
  • An internet connection on the Development Host.
  • Root or sudo permission on the Development Host.
  • A copy of the Linux Kernel (bzImage-3.10-ts-x86_64 ) and Root File System (rootfs.tar.gz) for the Target Board downloaded from Factory. These are found in the output directory of your online build, or in the directory build_x86_64-timesys-linux-<libc>/images/ on the command line.

Target Requirements

To boot the Gizmo Explorer Kit, you will need the following items:

  • Gizmo Explorer Kit Board
  • USB key or SATA drive with external power supply
  • USB keyboard
  • VGA monitor and cable

Once you have all of the necessary components, you should perform the following steps:

  1. Connect the board to the VGA monitor.
  2. Connect the USB keyboard to one of the available USB ports on the board.
  3. Connect the power supply to your board.

Preparing the Target

Installing Boot Images to your Hard Disk or USB key

You must install the root file system, kernel image, and GRUB image to the hard disk or USB key.

Since the Gizmo uses a non-EFI BIOS, you should use the following guide:

/docs/wiki/engineering/howto_install_grub_built_by_the_factory

NOTE: The default Timesys builds provide a non-EFI GRUB image by default.

Preparing the Host

No additional host setup is required to boot from hard disk.

Booting the Board

If you followed the instructions in /docs/wiki/engineering/howto_install_grub_built_by_the_factory, your board should boot to a Linux kernel automatically. However, you may wish to modify your boot process. These instructions detail how to manually boot a kernel from GRUB. For more information on Grub, see http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/.

Set your Root Partition

Grub commands affect the active partitiion. In order to load your kernel, you must set your hard drive RFS partition as active.

grub>set root=(hd0,1)

Load The Kernel

You can use kernel command load the kernel that is on the hard disk.

Example

grub> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.10-ts-x86_64 ip=dhcp root=/dev/sda1 rw rootwait

Boot The Kernel

Use the boot command to boot the loaded kernel image.

grub> boot

Additional Information

Factory Documentation

Bootloaders

There are a number of supported bootloaders on this platform. Use the following guides to use them: