debugging custom Xilinx boot loader with abatron and Montavista devrocket

Wade Maxfield wmaxfield at gmail.com
Sat Feb 24 03:11:28 EST 2007


  I want to debug a ppc custom boot loader with Montavista (since we spent
the money on it) under the Xilinx fx60.

  I've been able to get the kernel to debug under MontaVista.  However,
since the hardware engineers have given up on DDR ram (they could not get it
to work reliably and will be dropping it from the next release), I don't
think I can use Linux for now.   Unfortunately, this decision is not
changeable.  When a hardware engineer is embarrassed, the results are not
good for software engineers.

I don't think I've got enough static ram to host a PPC linux kernel and
applications (we only have 8 meg).  We will have 16 meg on the next release,
I expect.  Is that enough for simple apps and linux under PPC???  I need
some guidance here, as I don't have enough PPC experience.

  Fortunately, we got the ppc running and can manage the hardware using
Xilkernel and Xilnet (lwIP maybe later).

  I've done numerous Google searches, and searches on MontaVista support
page.  They are specific to Linux.

  Has anyone debugged a custom boot loader with MontaVista and Abatron?  How
do you set up the project under  eclipse (which is devrocket)?  Nothing I
see seems to match, as I need the boot vector code, and I don't know how to
tell eclipse to compile for that option.  Can I just bring over the elf
(compiled with debug under Xilinx) and the source files and start
debugging?  If so, what kind of project would I pick under devrocket?  The
more I look, the more confused I get.

   I could possibly bring up linux on an ML403 board and use gdb/ddd on
that.  if so, how would I cause the boot code to be located at the right
address?  Any howto's to read that aren't simply hand waves would be very
useful. I understand once I do it is easy, but getting it done the first
time is my problem right now.

   I've got to pull some serious asses from the fire, so I'm under a lot of
pressure.  I also know who will be blamed if I don't pull this off.

  Any help is greatly appreciated!

thanks,
wade
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