1 2In U-Boot, we implemented the networked console via the standard 3"devices" mechanism, which means that you can switch between the 4serial and network input/output devices by adjusting the 'stdin' and 5'stdout' environment variables. To switch to the networked console, 6set either of these variables to "nc". Input and output can be 7switched independently. 8 9We use an environment variable 'ncip' to set the IP address and the 10port of the destination. The format is <ip_addr>:<port>. If <port> is 11omitted, the value of 6666 is used. If the env var doesn't exist, the 12broadcast address and port 6666 are used. If it is set to an IP 13address of 0 (or 0.0.0.0) then no messages are sent to the network. 14 15For example, if your server IP is 192.168.1.1, you could use: 16 17 => setenv nc 'setenv stdout nc;setenv stdin nc' 18 => setenv ncip 192.168.1.1 19 => saveenv 20 => run nc 21 22 23On the host side, please use this script to access the console: 24 25 tools/netconsole <ip> [port] 26 27The script uses netcat to talk to the board over UDP. It requires you to 28specify the target IP address (or host name, assuming DNS is working). The 29script can be interrupted by pressing ^T (CTRL-T). 30 31Be aware that in some distributives (Fedora Core 5 at least) 32usage of nc has been changed and -l and -p options are considered 33as mutually exclusive. If nc complains about options provided, 34you can just remove the -p option from the script. 35 36It turns out that 'netcat' cannot be used to listen to broadcast 37packets. We developed our own tool 'ncb' (see tools directory) that 38listens to broadcast packets on a given port and dumps them to the 39standard output. use it as follows: 40 41+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 42#! /bin/bash 43 44[ $# = 1 ] || { echo "Usage: $0 target_ip" >&2 ; exit 1 ; } 45TARGET_IP=$1 46 47stty icanon echo intr ^T 48./ncb & 49nc -u ${TARGET_IP} 6666 50stty icanon echo intr ^C 51kill 0 52+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 53 54Again, this script takes exactly one argument, which is interpreted 55as the target IP address (or host name, assuming DNS is working). The 56script can be interrupted by pressing ^T (CTRL-T). 57 58The 'ncb' tool can be found in the tools directory; it will be built 59when compiling for a board which has CONFIG_NETCONSOLE defined. 60 61For Linux, the network-based console needs special configuration. 62Minimally, the host IP address needs to be specified. This can be 63done either via the kernel command line, or by passing parameters 64while loading the netconsole.o module (when used in a loadable module 65configuration). Please refer to Documentation/networking/logging.txt 66file for the original Ingo Molnar's documentation on how to pass 67parameters to the loadable module. 68 69The format of the kernel command line parameter (for the static 70configuration) is as follows: 71 72 netconsole=[src-port]@[src-ip]/[<dev>],[tgt-port]@<tgt-ip>/[tgt-macaddr] 73 74where 75 76 src-port source for UDP packets 77 (defaults to 6665) 78 src-ip source IP to use 79 (defaults to the interface's address) 80 dev network interface 81 (defaults to eth0) 82 tgt-port port for logging agent 83 (defaults to 6666) 84 tgt-ip IP address for logging agent 85 (this is the required parameter) 86 tgt-macaddr ethernet MAC address for logging agent 87 (defaults to broadcast) 88 89Examples: 90 91 netconsole=4444@10.0.0.1/eth1,9353@10.0.0.2/12:34:56:78:9a:bc 92 93or 94 95 netconsole=@/,@192.168.3.1/ 96 97Please note that for the Linux networked console to work, the 98ethernet interface has to be up by the time the netconsole driver is 99initialized. This means that in case of static kernel configuration, 100the respective Ethernet interface has to be brought up using the "IP 101Autoconfiguration" kernel feature, which is usually done by defaults 102in the ELDK-NFS-based environment. 103 104To browse the Linux network console output, use the 'netcat' tool invoked 105as follows: 106 107 nc -u -l -p 6666 108 109Note that unlike the U-Boot implementation the Linux netconsole is 110unidirectional, i. e. you have console output only in Linux. 111