Category: Embedded

  • Using qemu-user to chroot and bootstrap other architectures on #FreeBSD

    My last post spawned enough feedback that I thought I would dump some notes here for those interested in building a chroot on FreeBSD that allows you to test and prototype architectures, e.g. ARMv6 on AMD64. The FreeBSD buildsys has many targets used for many things, the two we care about here are buildworld and […]

  • Sometimes you have to sit down and write #FreeBSD documentation

    When working on new projects or hacks, sometimes you just have to stop, think and start writing down your processes and discoveries. While working on bootstrapping the DLink DIR-825C1, I realized that I had accumulated a lot of new (to me) knowledge from the FreeBSD Community (namely, Adrian Chadd and Warner Losh). There is a […]

  • Wait … Why is this stuff so hard? — Hacking the Dell DRAC

    We recently “destroyed” an Dell Poweredge R720 at the office and it was to be retired to the dust bin.  We ran the Dell updates for firmware things and the machine now is completely unbootable.  Too bad, it was a very nice machine. But, this led me down an interesting road.  I cracked open the […]

  • How to fry a router in X-1 steps, The Serial Console complete

    If you saw my first post  regarding my attempts to use a DLink DIR-825 with FreeBSD, you noted that I was busily trying to get the serial console working.  I won’t go over the reasons for it in this new post, but get straight into the fun and games. My motivation here is to make […]

  • How to fry a router, in X easy steps: The Serial Console

    I’ve started to hack on my DLink DIR-825 B1 to get it running FreeBSD and have had some great success.  Adrian Chadd, adrian@freebsd.org put together a build system for this router and committed some of the needed changes to get this Atheros MIPS 24k based router working for us and I’ll try to document my […]

  • The sacrifices we must make for science!

    Interesting day on the phone with DLink.  When I say “day”, I do mean DAY.  More or less, Monday must be DLink’s crazy time when everyone comes back from work and finds their office routers dead or something. The DIR-825 model C1 that I initially bought to test out MIPS on FreeBSD died a noble […]