HOWTO install a Network Processor IXP2400 card built by Radisys

Jean-Patrick Gelas <jpgelas@ens-lyon.fr> (February 2006)

Note: The goal of this page is to hold some information about installing (and maybe programming) an IXP2400 Network Processor card built by the Radisys company. I'm writing this page for my own usage, however if you find useful information here feel free to use them at your own risk.

Basics

Our Radisys card is currently plugged in a Compaq Proliant (dual-processor) named tamanoir0 (and also called the host). This machine is located in the west machine room of the 3rd floor.
The serial wire is connected to /dev/ttyS0 with the following parameters: 57600 8N1.
The MAC address of the Ethernet port available on the card is: 0x00 00 50 11 53 84

The current network configuration of the host system are as follow. eth0 is connected to the production network (via dhcp), and eth1 to the Radisys card through a private class C address.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
tamanoir0:~# ifconfig 

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:08:02:A0:BF:47  
inet addr:140.77.15.17  Bcast:140.77.15.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:08:02:A0:BD:EE  
inet addr:192.168.0.60  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Ethernet's Radisys card interface should request an IP address via dhcp, thus you need to install a dhcp server on the host system. However, when you configure this server be very careful that it does not respond to all the dhcp requests (running on the production network). Thus, to allow response only to the Radisys card, we set the default parameter of dhcp to eth0.
```
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
tamanoir0:~# cat /etc/default/dhcp
INTERFACES="eth1"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

It is advised to have a NFS server available on the host to allow the Linux system running on the Radisys card in order to mount a rich, large, flexible file system. We choose to give access to the host's /opt directory.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
tamanoir0:~# cat /etc/exports 

/opt/   192.168.0.61/32(rw,no_root_squash,no_all_squash,sync)
(ln -s /home/opt /opt)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The kernel file image can be downloaded through tftp. Add the following line to your inetd.conf and copy the kernel file (e.g zImage-ixp) to /tftpboot directory.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
tftp      dgram   udp     wait    nobody  /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /tftpboot
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

While you access the bootstrap session through minicom (or cu) via the serial port, you can type the following commands to boot the kernel (e.g zImage-ixp) and available in the host's /tftpboot directory.
```
Redboot> load -r -b 0xC208000 -m TFTP -h 192.168.0.60 zImage-ixp
Redboot> go 0xC208000
```
(-r : raw file, -b : base address)
To force the card to request an IP address (use bootp), you must configure it properly thanks to the fconfig command available in Redboot (and remember to save the config).
To redirect syslog messages to tamanoir0 (192.168.0.60) check /etc/init.d/rcS used by the linux running on the Radisys card.
```
...
# Start syslogd/klogd
echo -n "Starting syslogd: "
syslogd -R 192.168.0.60
echo "done."
...
```
To allow remote UDP logging add the following line in /etc/init.d/sysklogd
```
SYSLOGD="-r"
```

Other

Another host system (called qos3) embedding a Radisys card is currently up and available in grid5000. From this node I downloaded /tftboot/zImage-ixp and a promising file /opt/old_ssoudan/ixp_opt.tar :-).

reso341:~$ ssh jpgelas@grid5000.ens-lyon.fr
*************************************************************************
For Grid5000 team only.  Unathorized access by any means is forbidden.
Unathorized access may be investigated by any means necessary.
*************************************************************************

jpgelas@rork:~$ ssh root@10.69.1.1
root@10.69.1.1's password: **********
root@qos3:~/

Acknowledgements

Most but all information above were provided by Sébastien Soudan who helps me a lot setting the Radisys card and the system hosting it.

Appendix

`dhcpd.conf`

allow booting;
allow bootp;

deny unknown-clients;

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
	default-lease-time 1209600; # two weeks
		max-lease-time 31557600; # one year
		group {
			next-server 192.168.0.60; # ip address of tftp server
			# option routers DefaultGatewayIP; # default gateway
				host enp2611 {
					option host-name "enp2611";
					hardware ethernet 00:00:50:11:53:84; 
					fixed-address 192.168.0.61;
					option root-path "/opt/hardhat/previewkit/arm/xscale_be/target";
					filename "zImage-ixp-2.6";
				}
		}
}