Communicate with your board from a Linux Host (Basics)

RS232 Terminal configuration

You will need a RS232 terminal emulator to communicate with U-Boot. You can choose between:

• Kermit
• Minicom
• GtkTerm

We suggest you to use Kermit as Terminal emulator for RS232 connection. Minicom was sadly reported to have problems when communicating with U-Boot (ZModem data transfer). If you just need a simple serial console and not to transfer data through RS232, then GTKTerm is the perfect choice ! (package gtkterm in Ubuntu)

TFTP server

In order to send your image files (U-Boot, Linux, RootFS or Firmware) with higher speed to your Armadeus board, you can use the Ethernet link and a TFTP server. Once the server started, the files located in the server shared directory (/tftpboot by default) will be accessible from the U-Boot TFTP client.

TFTP server installation

• On *Ubuntu / Debian:

$ sudo apt-get install tftpd xinetd

or use Synaptic

• On Fedora:

# rpm -q tftpd xinetd

• Then create the directory that will contain all the files that the server will export (you have to be root to do that):

$ sudo mkdir /tftpboot
$ sudo chmod 777 /tftpboot

Server configuration

• Edit or create the configuration file /etc/xinetd.d/tftp and modify/add it the following lines:

# default: off
# description: The tftp server serves files using the trivial file transfer
#       protocol.  The tftp protocol is often used to boot diskless
#       workstations, download configuration files to network-aware printers,
#       and to start the installation process for some operating systems.
service tftp
{
       socket_type             = dgram
       protocol                = udp
       wait                    = yes
       user                    = root
       server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
       server_args             = -s /tftpboot
#       disable                 = yes
}

• Restart xinetd service:

# killall -HUP xinetd

• Put some files in /tftpboot

Links

• Kermit Homepage
• GTKTerm Homepage