[geeks] Sun: SunFire V20z serial port processor

Thu Feb 2 22:43:55 EST 2023

I have a SunFire V20z, an x86 machine.  It works reasonably well for
most of the purposes I want to put it to.

But it seems to have an embedded "service processor" (SP, what doc I've
found calls it).  Upon power-on, the back-panel serial port babbles a
bunch of stuff that makes it appear to be running some Linux variant.

My question for the moment is, is enough known about the hardware to
replace that with something else without losing functionality?  (The
"something else" does not need to exist at the moment; I intend to roll
my own software for it, if I can find enough doc, probably starting
with NetBSD.)

It's documented as, and appears to self-identify as, a PowerPC, which
is hopeful, but it clearly has additional hardware surrounding it....

I'm appending the boot messages I captured after my signature.  I've
edited them to:

- Delete CRs wherever they appears next to an LF.
- Replace BS with ^H wherever it occurs.

I can't log in to this Linux.  I've found documentation describing a
way to reset it to factory defaults, but I haven't tried that yet.

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PPCBOOT Starting

CPU:   XPC860xxZPnnD4 at 64 MHz: 4 kB I-Cache 4 kB D-Cache FEC present
Board: Service Processor Stage 1 - Rev. 0
DRAM:  64 MB
FLASH: 16 MB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Product_ID = 0xff (255)
PPCBOOT revision = V2.3.0.3
Board_Revision = 0x08 (8)
PRS revision = 0x66 (102)
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  4 ^H^H^H 3 ^H^H^H 2 ^H^H^H 1 ^H^H^H 0 
## Booting image at 40080000 ...
   Image Name:   Linux Kernel for SP
   Image Type:   PowerPC Linux Kernel Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    681511 Bytes = 665 kB = 0 MB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
   Uncompressing Kernel Image ... OK
## Loading RAMDisk Image at 40180000 ...
   Image Name:   Simple Ramdisk Image
   Image Type:   PowerPC Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    4165647 Bytes = 4068 kB = 3 MB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
   Loading Ramdisk to 03b66000, end 03f5f00f ... OK
Linux version 2.4.18 (navin.boppuri at southern) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release/MontaVista)) #1 Fri Apr 1 15:23:25 CST 2005
On node 0 totalpages: 16384
zone(0): 16384 pages.
zone(1): 0 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram rw devfs=
Decrementer Frequency = 240000000/60
Calibrating delay loop... 63.69 BogoMIPS
Memory: 58580k available (1264k kernel code, 456k data, 64k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
devfs: v1.10 (20020120) Richard Gooch (rgooch at atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
JFFS2 version 2.1. (C) 2001 Red Hat, Inc., designed by Axis Communications AB.
CPM UART driver version 0.03
ttyS00 at 0x0280 is a SMC
ttyS01 at 0x0380 is a SMC
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
block: 128 slots per queue, batch=32
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 23552K size 1024 blocksize
eth0: FEC ENET Version 0.2, FEC irq 3, addr 00:09:3d:11:ca:d3
SLIP: version 0.8.4-NET3.019-NEWTTY (dynamic channels, max=256).
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
sp flash device: 1000000 at 40000000
 Amd/Fujitsu Extended Query Table v1.3 at 0x0040
number of CFI chips: 1
Creating 12 MTD partitions on "Service Processor flash device":
0x00000000-0x00040000 : "PPCBOOT"
0x00040000-0x00080000 : "Environment"
0x00080000-0x00180000 : "Linux Kernel"
0x00180000-0x00600000 : "BASE file system"
0x00600000-0x00d80000 : "Value Add file system Image"
0x00ec0000-0x00ee0000 : "VPD Area - Protected"
0x00ee0000-0x00f00000 : "Diagnostics Reserved"
0x00f00000-0x01000000 : "Flash file system"
0x00000000-0x00ea0000 : "Entire flash"
0x00d80000-0x00dc0000 : "Custom Area"
0x00dc0000-0x00e60000 : "Unused Area"
0x00e60000-0x00ea0000 : "PPCBOOT Update Area"
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
ip_conntrack (512 buckets, 4096 max)
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 4068k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Mounted devfs on /dev
Freeing unused kernel memory: 64k init
INIT: version 2.78 booting
Mounting local filesystems...
Booted from ramdisk..
Service Processor GPIO driver, ver. V2.4.0.10
Service Processor PRS Low-Level driver, ver. 2.0a
Service Processor SPI driver, ver. V2.4.0.10
JNET driver online.
Configuring iptables
Hostname: node0016.
Setting up IP spoofing protection: rp_filter.
Disable TCP/IP Explicit Congestion Notification: done.
Configuring network interfaces: done.
Starting portmap daemon: portmap.
INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
NETDEV WATCHDOG: jnet0: transmit timed out
Starting metalog for logging services
Starting internet superserver: inetd.
Starting system management applications...
Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd.

node0016 login: 