Is it possible to netboot a FreeRunner?

[Jan Keymeulen]

On Sun 31 August 2008 om 14:30:11 GMT Al Johnson told us:
> On Saturday 30 August 2008, Andreas Zuber wrote:
> > Am Samstag 30 August 2008 10:06:01 schrieb Torfinn Ingolfsen:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I just got a strange idea into my head. So I'll ask a possibly silly
> > > question:
> > >
> > > Is it possble to netboot a Neo FreeRunner? Can you netboot at all over
> > > usb? Does uboot have netbot support?
> >
> > I know uboot from an other embedded system, where it was installed, and it
> > is able to download a kernel from a tftp server to the memory. This is done
> > by the "tftpboot" command.
> > There is also a "dhcp" command so uboot can get an ip for the network.
> >
> > But i dont know if uboot can handle the usb as a network device. Someone
> > has already tried this?
> 
> I think it can be done, but you will now need a custom kernel. When moving the 
> USB ethernet gadget driver from built-in to module Andy Green (IIRC) 
> mentioned that someone needed it builtin for netbooting with rootfs on NFS.

Booting with rootfs on nfs != netbooting.

Netbooting gets a kernel from a tftpserver, while rootfs on nfs requires
a kernel already loaded. The problem here is that it's uncertain whether
uboot can handle the usb network interface (or wireless or bluetooth).

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