Hi, Jeff and Ioana,
To get the /proc/*/hw/io_reg/* devices you will need to run a BORPH enabled
linux kernel. This will lock you into an older kernel (unless you want to
migrate the BORPH linux changes to a newer kernel, but that would be a lot of
work). I am not sure what level (or longevity) of support the older
BORPH-enabled kernel will have on ROACH2, but if that's adequate for you then
you should be all set.
The new approach on ROACH2 is to interface to the FPGA via a kernel module that
maps the FPGA (and all the gateware yellow block devices) directly into the
PPC address space. This is much faster than the BORPH approach, but does not
create the /proc files that I suspect your python scripts use on ROACH1.
Instead, the new approach uses a new version of tcpborphserver (even though
the only thing left from BORPH is the bof file format) to provide access to
the gateware devices via KATCP.
If you really have stuff that you want the PPC to do (besides provide access to
the devices via tcpbporphserver), you could create your own extensions to
tcpborphserver or create some sort of python extension (written in C) that
mimics much of what tcpborphserver does.
I would recommend going the tcpborphserver extension route if 1) you decide to
go with the new kernel module approach and 2) you need to run custom code on
the PPC (e.g. for fringe rotation updates or something like that).
Hope this helps,
Dave
On Jan 8, 2013, at 6:00 PM, Haoxuan Zheng wrote:
Dear Casper Group,
We are working in MIT's Omniscope group, which until now has been using
roach-1's. Four days ago, we got our first roach-2 board! Following the mail
archive (thank you so much for your help!), we set a static ip for the
roach-2 through the serial port, and we managed to program the fpga through
the telnet connection using katcp commands, with the PowerPC booting
soloboot from its flash drive.
However, in our roach-1 system, which had NFS setup, we made use of a python
script running on the PowerPC, whose role was to take the data from the FPGA,
and send it through the UDP protocol to the server PC for storage.
We are now trying to use the same code for the roach-2; for this, we need to
have python running on the PowerPC.
Is there any way to get python going if we have the PowerPC booting in
soloboot from the flash drive?
If not, what do you recommend us to do?
If the answer is that we need to set up netboot to boot via dhcp+tftp+nfs,
there is another constraint: we want our final system to make use of a
combination of roach-1 and roach-2.
We are going to have the server PC connected to both. Is there going to be a
conflict between the versions when we try to set up the NFS for roach-2 as
well?
We weren't part of the group when the first roaches in our group were
configured, and this is all new to us, so we really appreciate your help.
Thank you so much!
Ioana, Jeff
