HELP!

[Nathor]

I've recently acquired a Cobalt raq 4r from a friend of mine that was clearing out his basement. I've got a qube 2 as well, but haven't played with that yet. 

Upon receiving the unit I tried connecting the terminal but to no avail. For whatever reason the one computer in the house with a serial port won't talk to the raq, so I couldn't tell which firmware I was using. I was able to verify that I could specify hda4 at boot, so I figured that there's a good chance that I have the proper firmware for raqcop.

After imaging one of the harddrives with the raqcop-1.4.18.vmdk file and reaconnecting it (and leaving the other disconnected, a fallback if raqcop doesn't work) I booted up the raq, specified hda4 and everything seemed to be fine. The raq successfully booted and is now showing the lovely bandwidth meter.

But thats it. The raq won't serve my laptop an IP address. Forcing my laptop to use 192.168.5.35 allows me to successfully ping the raq at 192.168.5.17 but thats about it. I also can't ssh to the machine, as it gives me a "Network Error: connection refused" from the box.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Davesworld]

You should be able to go https://192.168.5.17:445 to get to the web gui if your laptop has an ip in the same subnet. It doesn't have dhcp enabled by default, you have to enable it if you want it to act as a dhcp server. There's a few things may need to do to personalize it depending on what type of network, red connection and so forth. To connect via serial, the port has to be 115200 in your pc and you have to use a nullmodem cable to connect. If using hyperterminal, let it do auto at first. The terminal type is vt100. Many serial ports default at 9600 baud. If you are using a normal serial cable and not a nullmodem cable, it probably won't work.

[Nathor]

Thanks. My problem was definately the flashrom. Although I was able to select hda4 and the raq seemed to boot into ipcop just fine, I couldn't talk to it at all. For whatever reason I can't use the serial terminal, however I have no way of testing if its my computer or the cable (even though the null modem cable is brand new, came in the packaging accompanied by the raq).

Here's what I had to do to get everything working:

There's a bit of a lack of documentation as to how exactly to go about flashing the flashrom out there. I ended up booting the box back from the other half of the raid array (I left the cobalt OS on their intentionally just in case) and FTPing the romfiles that I obtained from http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobalt-rom.

I then logged into the raq via telnet using the admin account. I'm not sure if you're supposed to use the "root" account or if you can flash from admin, but I used it anyways by using the "su" command and the admin password.

Next  I moved the files to the BIN directory and performed a chmod command on at least the flashrom tool and the rom I wanted to use in order to make them executable. I would suggest renaming the rom file as I had some trouble copying it out from memory at 4am.

Now, I was able to follow Jeff Walter's tutorial at http://gentoo.404ster.com/texts.php?action=view&id=2. It will give the detailed commands on how to first backup, then flash, then verify the flashrom to ensure a proper flash. That particular process was so easy I thought I HAD to have been doing something wrong. However, it flashed without an issue.

For fun I tried booting to the old cobalt os on the other half of the raid array, to no avail. I'm sure I would have to upgrade the cobalt OS as well in order to use it with this firmware, but if the raqcop succeeds I won't be needing that stuff anymore.

Next I re-connected the winimaged raqcop drive back to the raq. As prompted in the installation instructions I directed the raq to boot to hda4. Everything booted as directed! The installation instructions at raqcop.com instructed me to pick up an ip address via dhcp from the raq, but it didn't appear as if dhcp had been enabled at the image level, so I specified my IP in my network settings and telnetted into the ipcop box. Sure enough, using the username and password that are supplied in the vmware image readme txt file (the passwords aren't in the winimage txt file) I was able to login and run the setup command!

For whatever reason, enabling DHCP via telnet didn't work, but all of the other settings including setting up the "green" and "red" networks, all of the IP addressing and actual DHCP settings (such as the dynamic IP range etc...) worked like a charm. I reset the raq for good measure (booted without issues back into raqcop) and logged in via https (using port 445 of course  ) and was able to enable dhcp from there.

The raq has been doing happily for over 8 hrs now! You may want to update your installation instructions to note that installation is so easy "even a windows guy can do it!"

If I may make some suggestions on how to make this easier for folks in the future:

-DHCP is not enabled by default on the raq. Set your computer's ip to something in the same ip range and telnet from there.
-The default passwords for the raqcop installation are in the vmware image readmefile, but not in the winimage one.
-Jeff Walter's tutorial on flashing the rom was the most accurate that I could find (http://gentoo.404ster.com/texts.php?action=view&id=2). Use it to help flash the rom.
-The flashrom tool and romfile are located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobalt-rom
-You'll need to know some basic unix commands. Look them up on the net.
-Once logged into the cobalt's os via telnet, use the "su" command to log into the root if required. The password is the same as the admin password.

Also for note...

I have the raq 4r here now happily running raqcop. I also have a cobalt qube 2. I don't owe these units anything and would happily volunteer them, as well as my time, to development beta testing if needed. I'm not much of a linux guy, but am willing to learn.

Any suggestions on what to do with the qube?

Thanks for a great product guys. Even with all of the headaches it was a fair amount of fun, and when you get down to it, actually pretty easy.

[Davesworld]

The Qube will also make a cute table top ipcop box, the only diference is that it uses the natsemi driver for the built in nics rather than the e100 driver but there are only two ways to change it using our image to install with since you will have no network access to begin with. One is the serial console once booted with the command as root # nano /var/ipcop/ethernet/settings and change the green driver to =natsemi and also change the display_driver= to natsemi as well. Then it'll work. The other method is to slave the drive in to a linux box and hand edit /var/ipcop/ethernet/settings. Another quick and dirty method is to use the iso image I provided and use a donor machine with a dp8381x nic in it and install with your cobalt drive in it.

The reason why the old flashrom booted it at all was because ipcop's ext3 filesystem can be ran as ext2 but without the journal. We deliberately don't go into flashing the rom here because there are already so many tutorials on how to do it already and some have done it via serial as well.

I'm still unclear as to why you cannot get serial console access. It likely is the pc end settings that are a problem. Other than that, what program are you using to try to access the console?

[Nathor]

I found many of the flashrom tutorials out there were either unclear or incomplete. I'm no software engineer, but I can weasel my way in/through/around most operating systems on most devices. However, all of the tutorials assumed you were very proficient with unix/linux operating systems. None of them went into details about how to connect to the box, transfer the rom files, where to put the rom files and how to make them executable. That was probably the biggest challenge of the entire process. Hopefully anyone with troubles will see my post below and be able to figure out the rest themselves.

However, I can understand why you'd intentionally NOT want to get into that racket. I'm certain its much too easy to brick a machine doing that.

Hmm, I may run a copy of ubuntu via CD to see if I can slave it up and edit the file manually. Should be fun as well

I'm not certain about the serial console access either. I'm using hyperterminal with a Windows Server 2003 box (as its the ONLY PC with a serial port on it!) using the same info as the manual provided. I recieved the raq almost brand new with the manual and cables. I wouldn't be surprised if its the PC though.

Thanks again!

[Nathor]

I know this isn't the Qube forum, but I thought since I had asked about the Qube here before, I thought I would ask another.

Would I have to flash the Qube's flashrom as well? If so can I use the same rom as for the Raq's?

Thanks in advance.

[Davesworld]

As long as it is a Qube 3 then yes. The only difference in configuration on the Qube3 is that the nics use the natsemi driver, NOT the e100. This also applies to a Raq550 as far as nics go. The Qube3, being of the 3000 series Cobalt's, often referred to as Gen III Cobalt units, takes the same Flash rom. Brian has set up a few of these for people and on Coptime, one of the -cobalt kernels you see may be a Qube. If I were making a firewall/router for a family member where they could tuck it in the corner of a table or something, I'd use a Qube. They almost don't need a fan. If only the lcd were on the front. It isn't backlit but a VFD will drop in and they are self illuminated anyway.