I’m still working on the Freebsd port, and haven’t tried to fix the network driver problem in Linux (it only happens on samba 3 which I don’t use daily). The reason to focus my work on the FreeBSD port is because I want to understand more about the network driver. The current Linux network driver was not written from scratch but from modifying existing source. The source was full of things that I don’t understand, which proves to be unnecessary after I gain understanding when writing the Freebsd network driver.
Here is the current FreeBSD port status:
- Timer is now working, previously the timer tick works, but the time counter was too fast.
- EHCI and OHCI is working, but there is still some caching problem, so i need to modify usb_busdma.c, this modification is not clean. I can access USB disks, and USB network adapter.
- Network driver works, but it is still very slow . I am still trying to understand better the DMA handling in FreeBSD. There is still one bug: you can not stop the interface and start it again. The stopping part works, ifconfig ece0 down, but the starting again part doesn’t.
- Multi user works. I can also activate network services, such as sshd.
I am still waiting for my perforce account. But anyone willing to test it can contact me. I still don’t know the best method to release a patch against CURRENT for people to try, because changes happens very quickly.
Here is the latest boot log: bsd-24-may-2009.txt
Looks very promising! It seems all things really needed are working.
How far have you come in writting a new network-driver or patching the existing one? What are the pros and kons when using BSD on the agestar?
Manuel
I am willing to test.
Just something to add to your agestar section. I have made a small hack to the emprex nsd100 ( very simila to agestar ) that gives telnet from boot ( no mucking about with preexec in samba ) and runs a script in the usb harddisc to allow you to basical do what you like without upsetting the original firmware.
http://emprex.codejs.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=601