[Gumstix-users] Newbie questions

[Ian M. <ic...@gm...>]

Hi all,

Sorry in advance for the possible obviousness of these questions.

I've had a netstix dropped on my desk with instructions to get it going and
evaluate it for our purposes; I've connected to it ok but there are a few
questions I've got before I can proceed to step 2.

uname -a returns:
Linux gumstix 2.6.18gum #1 Mon Nov 6 11:18:37 PST 2006 armv5tel unknown
and I'm running release 1161 according to /etc/gumstix-release.

There is a CF card inserted in the unit but "df" only shows this:
/dev/mtdblock1           15.8M      7.2M      8.5M  46% /
which I assume is the flash chip storage. I don't see a /dev/hda1 so I can't
mount /mnt/cf/. How do I access the CF card storage?

One of the things I have to evaluate is how many processes we can safely run
on each unit; are the tools in the default build to show system resources?
(eg top)

I'm connecting via ssh and prefer to avoid opening the unit to access serial
ports, etc, so will be flashing new builds via ssh as detailed by
Craig here<http://docwiki.gumstix.org/Replacing_the_filesystem_image>;
these instructions mention copying the new u-boot.bin down, but this file is
only used in the path where the kernel versions don't match. If I've matched
the version correctly by downloading the buildroot with:
svn co -r1161 http://svn.gumstix.com/... etc
do I need to copy the u-boot.bin file as described?
Also, how concerned should I be about the dire warnings in this section?

Thanks in advance for any tips.
-- 
Ian Macdonald