NetConsole?

[apemberton]

I am curious to know if u-boot contains netconsole. I accept that in general the usb/serial console access is fine but it might be useful to access a 'plug's u-boot from the network. I used to use NetCat on port 6666 to access older Orion based systems. An alternative to fw_printenv/fw_setenv on GP's and whatever on SP's.
 

[NewIT_Marcus]

Not knowing what netconsole is, I found this. I don't know if this is the sort of procedure that you had in mind, but uboot-envtools (the package that provides fw_setenv and fw_printenv) doesn't work on the Sheevaplug, due to an endian-ness issue.

I also tried setting stdin, stdout, stderr according to the link referred to above. It doesn't alter boot behaviour. I don't know if I did it right, but I can't say that the answer to your question is yes.

[apemberton]

From a Buffalo Linkstation Orion unterseeboot which boots linux from hard disk:-

bootcmd=ide reset ; ext2load ide 1:1 0x00100000 /uImage ; setenv bootargs netconsole=6666@192.168.11.150/,@192.168.11.149/ root=/dev/sda2 rw ; bootm 0x00100000

Netconsole is built in to the u-boot so I was wondering if the same was true for the Sheevaplug. It isn't that important.

On my 32 bit PC's I have nc111nt.exe - a very old utility. Telnetting to the IP number with port 6666 also works.

Duh! Y'know, why don't I just try it! 

[apemberton]

To answer my own question, I see that netconsole is not by default compiled into a kernel. I guess it can be enabled through a 'make menuconfig' option and compiling a kernel. At least on K 2.6.36.2

Merry Christmas or whatever folks!