Re: Trying to boot Vaxstation using mopd

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro%linux-mips.org@localhost>]

Hi Christos,

 Apologies for the late reply -- I've been travelling a lot recently and I 
have a backlog of e-mail to handle.

On Fri, 10 Jun 2016, Christos Zoulas wrote:

> |  FWIW, I've been successfully using `mopd' regularly with Linux to 
> | download 32-bit and 64-bit ELF images to DECstation systems since forever 
> | (or ~2001), as I have a unit with REX firmware suffering from a TFTP boot
> | support bug.  It continues supporting DEC binary formats and I was able to 
> | boot a VAXstation as well as a DECserver 700 piece with it.  It works over 
> | FDDI too (a patch was required due to different framing), e.g. to boot 
> | from a DEFZA or a DEFTA.
> | 
> |  Patches at: <ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/mopd/> 
> | or grab a complete source RPM package from: 
> | <ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/SRPMS/mopd-2.5.3-15.src.rpm>. 
> | There are i386 and little-endian MIPS binary packages there as well, 
> | although this stuff is a bit dated and may not be an exact fit for a 
> | modern Linux installation; tweaking may be required.
> 
> Let's merge the changes? Is there anything I am missing?

 I don't know offhand, I'll have to have a look.  Among other changes I 
vaguely remember making updates for multicast raw socket group membership 
support, to avoid the burden of listening in the promiscuous mode.  These 
may not have made their way to your sources.

 IIRC I deliberately went back to the original 2.5.3 distribution because 
I decided random unofficial 2.5.4 patches floating around brought no 
value; besides, having a reference source tarball helped with "proper" 
software packaging (I've been using RPM, the Red Hat Package Manager, to 
maintain patches, builds and binaries).  This may have added to confusion.

 This was all long ago so I'll have to try and refresh memory by staring 
at actual code.  I agree it'd be unfortunate if all this effort was lost 
and people were driven into reinventing things.

 I plan to be back home from my travels next week -- I'll try to squeeze 
out some time to look into these patches.  I'll appreciate your patience 
and please feel free to ping me if you feel like running out of it.

  Maciej