[olpc-community-support] Boot into BIOS?

Richard A. Smith richard at laptop.org
Mon Dec 24 12:33:46 EST 2007


Steve Holton wrote:
> Do you have your developer key?
>    http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_Key
> 
> On Dec 21, 2007 2:26 PM, Patch < Patch at totallyradfans.com 
> <mailto:Patch at totallyradfans.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     I'm going to attempt to install another OS using a USB thumb drive,
>     how do I boot into the BIOS so I can change the boot order? I tried
>     holding down the game keys, but it seems to be looking for specific
>     files when I do that.
> 
>     Please tell me there's a way to get into the BIOS.

The Items you seek do not exist.  There is no BIOS as you would think of 
it on a PC.  OpenFirmware and the XO is quite different from anything 
you have worked with.  (unless you are a Mac user)

A developer key will allow you to drop to an OpenFirmware prompt and 
then you can boot from any device the XO has.  Nand, USB or SD.

But you must have a a developer key, without a developer key you cannot 
boot an unsigned OS.

See here:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_Key

Also understand that there is a lot of custom stuff on the XO.  Booting 
a generic distro kernel will probably not have any of those 
customizations.  Not all of them are upstream yet.

I recommend you pull a copy of the olpc-2.6 kernel from dev.laptop.org 
and then boot that or use some of the pre-build kernel .rpms at
  http:// dev.laptop.org/~dilinger/master

-- 
Richard Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child


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