NetBSD on Edimax BR6104K with nfs root

[Jan Richling <jan%richling.de@localhost>]

Hi all,

Yesterday I managed to run a nfsrooted system using the ADM5120 kernel
from evbmips (cvs version 20070416) and a normal evbmips NetBSD 4.0
userland on a simple Edimax BR6104K router.

Kernel configuration, bootstrapping and idea was derived from
http://linux-adm5120.sourceforge.net/netbsd/ with the necessary changes
for nfsroot. I have sent detailed description to the author of that site
and can send it to this list also if there is interest.

For information: It seems that sometimes between 20070416 and today the
ADM5120 source got broken. I was not able to compile the -current
version due to minor code problems that I tried to fix the obvious way
(defining missing constants etc.) but that code panic'ed in TLB errors.
The old code seems to run stable - the box is now up for 14 hours and is
compiling pkgsrc right now (direct! no cross compile - take ages but I
use it as stability test).

The hardware I used is very cheap (shop prices in germany are around 20
euro, I got mine for 3 Euro at ebay so this seems to be an interesting
platform.

Compared to OpenWRT Linux on the same hardware NetBSD feels much more
like a real operating system with less restriction and manages that slow
hardware much better.

Greetings from germany,

Jan

   ------------------------------------------------------------------
  / Dr. Jan Richling - http://www.richling.de                      /
 / Member of Computer Architecture and Communication Group -      /
/ Department of Computer Science - Humboldt University Berlin    /