I've been too stupid... by accident I set the input-device variable to something very useless...

Now I cannot access the smartfirmware commands at all.

The system still boots Linux, so I can lines to the Forth code that executes the boot menu.

Can someone with Forth skills perhaps supply me with a few lines of code that will put back the input-device to the default setting...

Well, depending on your firmware version, there two is different things you can try.

You can try pressing F1 between the two keyboard light flash during the early boot, but i believe it only disables the nvramrc, not the variable you have set.

Another more radical manner of handling this is to use the trick described at :

http://bplan-gmbh.de/update_e.html

To go to the early console, you need to remove the ram modules and boot the box without ram. You will get an empty screen at boot, but you will be able to access the serial console, and enter the cryptic commands provided in the above web site. This should erase env variables to their default state.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

My SmartFW version is 20040810112413

1) The F1 solution does not work for me

2) Removing the RAM block(s) causes the Peg to enter a low level IKARUS command line interface.
I have tried to enter the command sequence found here (http://bplan-gmbh.de/update_e.html) both manually and via a small program that sends a byte from the string every 100 ms (and also tried 200 ms and 500 ms). It looks as if some of the characters in the command sequence are not recognised as proper commands (it looks as if the plus (+) character is not allowed. If I remove the extra ';+' I get no errors and after the final 'g' command the system is not responding anymore - after a reset, the text "Configuring memory" appears followed by some "FQFQFQFQ" text. This does not solve my problem though...


Questions:
- does the command sequence appy to the firmware version 20040810?
- any docs on IKARUS command line interface?

Hi,

I do not get fully what you mean.

As you say Linux still boots, my guess is the smart firmware settings You have set still works.

Maybe it is the nvram settings that disappeared, or are faulty ?

What happens if You break the boot procedure in firmware during boot up by pressing the esc key ? will you get the prompt in smart firmware then ?

In this case, can you then issue the command nvedit which brings up the nvram editor to edit the nvram settings ?

My problem is that I by accident set input-device incorrectly:
setenv input-device "console"

I shouldn't have messed this up, but kept the default value "keyboard" (I guess) which works fine... BTW. Please feel free to post your output from 'printenv'

Since input-device is now corrupted I cannot hit ESC to get to the SmartFirmwire prompt. Input has been redirected to "console" (whatever that is)...

Linux still boots fine since the "boot-file" NVRAM setting setting is "boot/menu" and my disk still has the Forth boot menu (created by BootCreator) located in the /boot directory.

I can live with this - as long as I use the Peg for Linux, but I'm trying to bring NetBSD to the platform as well...

So - my problem is basically that I want to bring the "input-device" setting back to the default value.

I am (as an alternative to hack Sven posted) trying to ajust the Forth boot code in /boot/menu to execute the "input" method so it is reset back to "keyboard", but so far without success due to missing Forth skills...

http://www.pegasosppc.com/manuals/SFUserManual.pdf

there's a command to get back to default value in OF hope this helps !

edit : pretty harsh if u cannot access the OF prompt at all

We have formulated a solution!

You will need a null modem cable connected to the serial port. The firmware is intelligent enough to recognise that you have put in ridiculous items to the input-device or so, and in these cases will report to the serial port.

Since you have said you set the input-device variable to console, we could not reproduce this error. At least here, the console directed to the serial output.

If you set the input-device to screen or some other device similar, then it will not work, but the solution is to remove that device.

console by default targets the keyboard - so remove the keyboard.

screen by default targets the graphics card - so remove the graphics card.

Plug in your serial cable, watch the terminal (115200, 8n1, no handshake) and it should produce an "ok" prompt.

Please reset your input-device variable to "keyboard" here and then never touch it again!

NOTEZ BIEN: there is a lesson here, the firmware will redirect to the serial console if the device node it is asked to configure does not exist or does not have the correct read/write methods - therefore by removing both the screen and keyboard, the "console" device becomes invalid as if you had set it to something gibberish like "kittens" or "biscuit" - but if you set "input-device" to an IDE device or USB device, or the inactive second serial port, you are going to be living in a world of pain and suffering, as you cannot remove these devices from the motherboard or the device tree. Please do not tamper with these variables without substantial testing in the console first. You can do all the things you want via console and nvram before you ever should attempt to set the environment variables.

The current (and next) firmware manual will explain this in greater detail, also. If nvramrc is corrupted or has broken code in it, pressing F1 between keyboard blinks on boot will fix your problem by skipping nvramrc and the auto-boot process.

I hope this helps. Please send chocolate cookies to Gerald for testing this for you

_________________
Matt Sealey

Success!

By removing the keyboard and graphics card I can now fully acccess the smartfirmware prompt.

I can now see that I by mistake set the input-device variable to "screen" (and not "console" as I said earlier...).

By issuing a "setenv input-device keyboard" command my problem is solved.

Thank you for your help!

glad to know it worked, this thread was quite interesting and a good lesson for us all to learn. Can't wait to see that new OF manual !