== Soekris Manual ==

http://soekris.com/Manuals/net4801_manual.pdf

== boot infrastructure ==

The netboot image for debian is already around.  You need

wget http://centerclick.org/net4801/pxelinux/pxelinux.0.gz

as opposed to the pxelinux.bin that's already around.  You need to make a link in pxelinux.cfg to an appropriate pxelinux configuration file, namely the one for serial.  To the end of the 'install' image you want to add:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text

(we did this, so it's probably already there.)

Minicom should be set for 9600 baud, 8 databits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control.  Turn hardware flow control off in minicom.  The UNIX device for talking to the console is almost certainly /dev/ttyS0.

== configure the Soekris net4801 BIOS ==

Look at the banner from when the net4801 boots.  Get the BIOS version and check it against the Soekris web site.

Hit C-p as it is booting to get to a BIOS prompt.

Issue these commands at the BIOS prompt, filling in today's date and the current time.

date YYYY/MMDD
time HH:MM:SS
set ConSpeed=9600
set BootDrive=F0 FF 80 81

The only reliable way to obtain the MAC address of 'Eth 0', without having an operating system already loaded, is to watch the diagnostic output of 

boot f0

== Voyage Linux ==

Voyage Linux is Debian with enough removed so it will fit in 64Mb.

http://www.voyage.hk/software/voyage.html

The "Kingston Elite Pro" CF card is reported by the 4801 as

Pri Sla SAMSUNG CF/ATA LBA Xlt 1012-32-63

The SimpleTech CF card is

Pri Mas Hitachi XX.V.3.7.0.0 LBA 993-16-63

The Kingston has an extremely different geometry when connected to my laptop through an IOMEGA USB media adapter.  Nor can I adjust the reported geometry in fdisk. So you can't use it to hold bootable images.  I have no idea why the Kingston shows up as a slave.

Get the tarball, untar it on your linux laptop as root like this:

sudo tar --numeric-owner -zxvf voyage-0.2pre4.tar.gz

Attach the CF card.  If it gets automounted, unmount it.  Cd into the untarred directory and run voyage.update as root.  The CF card is likely to be /dev/sdb.  On an Ubuntu box you can use /media/usbdisk as the mount point.  When this finishes, move the CF card into the Soekris net4801, and reboot it.

Log in as root.  The default root password is, predictably, 'voyage'.  Voyage linux tries to be cute by mounting everything read only, so you need to remount the root partition as read write, like this:

mount -o remount,rw /

Now you can and should change the root password.

Run 

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

as usual.

== PPP/SSH client configuration ==