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Boot Linux from a FireWire Device

By Martyn Honeyford
2005-04-12

Linux Support
As you may expect, Linux support for these enclosures is very good indeed. Any device that adheres to the SBP (Serial Bus Protocol) standard for "Mass Storage Devices" can easily be used with Linux.

In general, to enable support for these devices you will need to have a number of things supported in your kernel (either directly compiled in or via modules).

For both USB and FireWire, SBP device support is implemented via SCSI emulation -- that is to say, the devices appear to Linux as though they were SCSI disks. This is a common way to abstract storage devices within the Linux world (for instance, IDE CD/DVD drives are typically also connected using SCSI emulation). For this reason, the following kernel support is required:

• SCSI support
• SCSI emulation
• SCSI disk support

In addition, the following support will be required according to the connection method:

• For FireWire:
• IEEE1394 support
• OHCI1394 support
• RAW1394 support
• SBP-2 support

• For USB:
• (host-side) USB support
• OHCI support
• UHCI support
• USB mass-storage support

You will obviously have to have all the normal support for the rest of your hardware (graphics cards and so on), and may require some additional modules, depending on your exact hardware.

For instance, I am using a PCMCIA (cardbus) FireWire card, so I needed to add:

• PCMCIA support
• cardbus support



Tutorial pages:

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks


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