Status of NetBSD on MIPS? And NetBSD on TP-Link?

[John Klos]

Hi,

I'm curious if the bugs in NetBSD 6 which cause system instability have
been corrected, perhaps in current, yet.

I'm also curious if anyone's looked into getting NetBSD onto these
wonderful little $25 TP-Link devices:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr702n
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n

These have a 400 MHz MIPS, are USB powered with a USB port, have 100 Mbps
ethernet and anywhere from 8 to 32 megs of memory. Loading a new firmware
image is as easy as using the web management interface. Of course it'd be
fun to get a full kernel and running OS into 2 megs of flash and 8 megs of
ram, which is something NetBSD can do but I don't think GNU/Linux can do
anymore.

Of course you can wire a serial port, too:

http://wiki.villagetelco.org/index.php?title=Building_a_Serial_Port_for_TL-WR703N

John

[Rémi Zara]

Hi,
I'm curious if the bugs in NetBSD 6 which cause system instability have been corrected, perhaps in current, yet.

Hi, I just tried cobalt with 6.1, and the problem is not fixed....

Regards,

Rémi Zara

[Rémi Zara]

Post by Rémi Zara

Hi,
I'm curious if the bugs in NetBSD 6 which cause system instability have been corrected, perhaps in current, yet.

Hi, I just tried cobalt with 6.1, and the problem is not fixed....

And current as of may 17 hangs very early after
4661168+133200 [227472+228334]=0x502074
Starting at 0x80001000

<hang>

Post by Rémi Zara
Regards,
Rémi Zara

[Michael]

Hello,

On Mon, 20 May 2013 16:17:29 +0200

Post by Rémi Zara

Post by Rémi Zara

Hi,
I'm curious if the bugs in NetBSD 6 which cause system instability have been corrected, perhaps in current, yet.

Hi, I just tried cobalt with 6.1, and the problem is not fixed....

And current as of may 17 hangs very early after
4661168+133200 [227472+228334]=0x502074
Starting at 0x80001000
<hang>

There was a commit yesterday which might help:

Module Name: src
Committed By: njoly
Date: Sun May 19 11:02:12 UTC 2013

Modified Files:
src/sys/kern: vfs_bio.c

Log Message:
Redo case where buf_map is not yet mapped when buf_memcalc() is called
early from pmap_bootstrap(). Makes alpha, and probably others, boot
again.

have fun
Michael

[Andy Ruhl]

Hi,
I'm curious if the bugs in NetBSD 6 which cause system instability have been
corrected, perhaps in current, yet.
I'm also curious if anyone's looked into getting NetBSD onto these wonderful
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr702n
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n
These have a 400 MHz MIPS, are USB powered with a USB port, have 100 Mbps
ethernet and anywhere from 8 to 32 megs of memory. Loading a new firmware
image is as easy as using the web management interface. Of course it'd be
fun to get a full kernel and running OS into 2 megs of flash and 8 megs of
ram, which is something NetBSD can do but I don't think GNU/Linux can do
anymore.
http://wiki.villagetelco.org/index.php?title=Building_a_Serial_Port_for_TL-WR703N

Have you done anything with these? I happen to have both (WR702N and
WR703N) now. I got the 702 to use "for real" and it still has the
stock firmware. I probably won't change it. I put the OpenWRT firmware
on the WR703N and managed to brick it somehow even though I wasn't
trying.

I don't have a lot of time lately, but at some point I'd like to get a
serial console on the 703 and see if it will netboot a kernel, and
then the NetBSD fun begins. Do you know if it will?

Andy

[John Klos]

Hi,

Post by Andy Ruhl
Have you done anything with these? I happen to have both (WR702N and
WR703N) now. I got the 702 to use "for real" and it still has the
stock firmware. I probably won't change it. I put the OpenWRT firmware
on the WR703N and managed to brick it somehow even though I wasn't
trying.

I added a serial port to one and I've learned quite a bit about u-boot,
but I haven't tried to boot NetBSD. It seems that NetBSD on MIPS is
broken unless you want to run NetBSD 5, so I figure it isn't worth the
effort until NetBSD in general is fixed. I'm going to write a separate
email about that.

John