Booting SPIN

October 15, 1995

How do I boot SPIN and play with it?

Copy the kernel to a place where tftpboot can find it

We prefer to boot kernels over the network rather than from the local file system as this drastically reduces the turnaround time of a build. The idea behind network booting is that some server listens out on the network for "bootp" requests on the same subnet. For us, that server is silk, and it begins looking for kernels starting from /afs/cs/project. Pathnames are specified relative to there.

If you've built a kernel, then just copy the kernel image (.../spin/kernel/sal/SPIN/spin.boot) to you project directory (/afs/cs/project/spin/YOU/spin.boot). Most of us just make a symlink to our build tree. Assuming you build in .../spin, this would be:

ln -s  /afs/cs/project/spin/YOU/spin/kernel/sal/SPIN/spin.boot /afs/cs/project/spin/YOU/spin.boot

Talking to the host

We use rconsole to directly interact with machines. See the rconsole page for a current list. Crash machines have a serial line connection to an rconsole server. You can run rconsole from anywhere in the network, and connect to the appropriate rconsole server.

You rconsole to one of the crash machines listed on the rconsole page by typing

% rconsole (machinename)

For example,

% rconsole tweed

Using rconsole

You will need to know the rconsole password. If you don't know it already, you will have to talk to one of us in person, as we don't send passwords via email. If all of them are taken you can zephyr to spin-m3 and ask if someone could make one available, since people just hang on to an rconsole. The escape sequence out of rconsole is (contrl)(shift)(dash) and then the char "q".

Once you are at the alpha boot prompt, which looks like:

>>>
>>> help

  BOOT
  HELP ADVANCED
  INITIALIZE
  SET[ENV]  
  SHOW | PRINTENV []
  TEST

type


>>> b -fi "/spin/YOU/spin.boot" ez0

where YOU is YOU

This should boot spin over the network via tftp, and eventually you'll get to the spin shell. The spin shell has "!>" as its prompt. How to get spindles into the kernel is another story. Watch this page for more details.

Where to go from here?

Once you've booted, you can talk to the shell, or connect with the debugger.

The Shell: The SPIN CLI
M3GDBTTD: Debugging

Additional information on booting

Alpha boot PROM

rconsole and crash machines

Bootflags

Author: becker@cs.washington.edu