This version of this document is no longer maintained. For the latest documentation, see http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs.

QNX Neutrino Hosts

This chapter includes the following:

• System requirements
• BIOS settings
• Installing QNX Momentics
• Activating QNX Momentics
• Commercializing your evaluation software
• Creating a bootable floppy
• Updating disk drivers
• Uninstalling QNX Momentics
• Determining your base directory

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If you've already installed an evaluation version of QNX Momentics 6.3.2, and you've purchased and received a commercial QNX License Certificate, please go to "Commercializing your evaluation software," below.

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System requirements

The System Profiler in the IDE requires a minimum color depth of 16 bits.

BIOS settings

We recommend you use the following BIOS settings:

• Disable Plug and Play OS.
• Set any parallel ports and onboard serial ports to specific addresses, if possible, instead of using an automatic setting.
• Enable SATA if your system includes a SATA drive.
• If you want to boot QNX Neutrino from the CD -- either to try it without installing it, or for troubleshooting -- make sure that the CD is the first boot device.
• If your BIOS is has an option for booting from "Other USB devices," enabling it could make the BIOS take a very long time to start.

Installing QNX Momentics

QNX Momentics 6.3.2 includes everything you need to build for all supported platforms (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, and x86). This CD includes the runtime version of the QNX Neutrino RTOS, as well as development tools and the IDE.

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You must do a fresh installation of this software. For QNX Neutrino self-hosted development, it's possible to have more than one version of QNX Momentics installed on your computer at the same time, by having them in separate partitions. If you want to retain an earlier released version of QNX Momentics, install 6.3.2 in a new partition. When you boot, you're asked to choose the partition by its number. If you're then prompted to choose from multiple .diskroot files, choose the one that corresponds to the partition that you already chose. You can install QNX Momentics into a new partition without harming the contents of other partitions. In text mode, we support only the US keyboard layout.

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To install QNX Momentics 6.3.2, do the following:

1. Insert the QNX Momentics Neutrino Host CD in the CD drive.
2. Boot from the CD and follow the instructions on your screen. The installer asks you to do the following:
   • Decide whether to run from the CD or install QNX Neutrino into a new disk partition. Press F3 to install, and then choose between normal and verbose modes.
   • Enter your license key. It doesn't matter if you include or omit the hyphens.
   • Read the license agreement. To accept its terms and continue with the installation, press F1.
   • Choose which disk you'd like to install QNX Neutrino on.
   • Choose which filesystem you'd like to install QNX Neutrino from; choose the appropriate CD device.
   • Choose the type for the new partition: 77, 78, or 79 (the default). If there's already a partition of the type you chose, you're given the choice of deleting a partition or choosing another type.
   • Choose the size of the new partition. You can also choose to examine the partition table if you want to delete an existing partition.
   • Choose a boot loader to use.
   • Choose where to install the software. We recommend you use the default location, /usr/qnx632.

   The installer will also ask if you wish to install some GNU Public License programs, such as tar and sed. We recommend that you do so for development machines.

3. Remove the CD from the drive and then reboot.

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   If your EIDE doesn't support DMA, boot using .altboot; press Esc when prompted.

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   If you have more than one partition on your disk, choose the one you installed QNX Neutrino in.

4. The first time you boot, a dialog asks you to choose the video driver, resolution, color depth, and refresh rate that are appropriate for your system. You can also choose whether to boot into text or graphical (Photon) mode.
5. Log in as root (or click Superuser in graphical mode). This account initially has no password; for instructions for setting the password and creating other accounts, see the Managing User Accounts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide. You'll find this manual in the online documentation, as well as on our website.

For more information about booting, see the Controlling How Neutrino Starts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide.

Activating QNX Momentics

The QNX Momentics development suite and certain related products require activation. If you don't activate the product within the specified timeframe, the product will cease to function until you activate it. No personal data is transferred during the activation process.

Activating automatically

If your development host is connected to the Internet, you can activate QNX Momentics automatically.

Activating manually

if your machine isn't connected to the Internet, you must activate your software manually from a machine that is, by doing the following:

1. In the QNX Momentics Activation dialog, click Activate Manually.

   The Manual Activation dialog appears with an activate-prompt key. This dialog has a button that you can use to save the activate-prompt key in a file, /etc/qnx/license/activate_prompt_key.txt. This can eliminate the need to retype the key, which can be error-prone.

2. Transfer the activate-prompt key to the machine that's connected to the Internet.
3. Go to our website, www.qnx.com, log into your myQNX account, and choose Activate Products (6.3.x).
4. Enter the activate-prompt key into the form that appears, and then click Generate Response Key. This will return an activate-response key.
5. Copy the activate-response key and paste it in a file.
6. Transfer the file into /etc/qnx/license/activate_response_key.txt on your QNX Momentics development host.
7. If you closed the QNX Momentics Activation dialog, open it again by selecting Configure-->Activate License from the Launch menu, or by entering the following at a terminal prompt:

   /etc/qnx/bin/qnxactivate -a
     

8. Choose Activate Manually, and use the Load Response from File button to load the activate-response key, and then click Activate.

If you choose not to activate at the time of installation, you can activate later by selecting Configure-->Activate License from the Launch menu, or by entering the following at a terminal prompt:

/etc/qnx/bin/qnxactivate -a

Commercializing your evaluation software

If you installed an evaluation copy of QNX Momentics 6.3.2, and you've now received a commercial QNX License Certificate, do the following to add your commercial license:

1. Choose Configure-->Add License from the Launch menu, or type:

   /usr/sbin/finstall -l
     

2. Enter the license-key information that's on your commercial QNX License Certificate.
3. Read the displayed End User License Agreement (EULA) and accept its terms if you wish to continue.

Creating a bootable floppy

We recommend that you install QNX Momentics on a machine that can boot from a CD-ROM. If your machine can't do this, you can create a bootable floppy.

The root directory of the QNX Momentics installation CD contains an image of a bootable floppy, named instflop.dat. To copy this file to a boot disk:

• On UNIX-style machines (including QNX Neutrino), use a utility such as dd to copy this image to a boot disk:

  dd if=instflop.dat of=/dev/fd0

• On Windows, you need a raw-copy utility. Although we don't support any such utilities, we recommend you use rawwrite, which you can find at:

  http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite

  Download this utility and extract it to a folder.

  To create a bootable floppy:

  1. Start rawwrite.
  2. Make sure the Floppy Drive combo box refers to your floppy drive.
  3. Under the Write tab, specify the location of instflop.dat in the Image File field, and click Write.

Updating disk drivers

The Neutrino boot process can dynamically add block I/O (i.e. disk) drivers, letting you boot on systems with newer controllers. The mechanism is simple and not proprietary to QNX Software Systems, so third parties can offer enhanced block drivers without any intervention on our part.

The driver update consists of the drivers themselves (devb-* only) and a simple configuration file. The configuration file is in plain text (DOS or UNIX line endings accepted), with the following fields separated by vertical bars:

drvr_name|type|timeout|add_args

The first three fields are mandatory. The fields are as follows:

drvr_name

The file name of the driver.

type

The string for the boot process to display when trying the driver.

timeout

The total time to wait for devices.

add_args

Any additional arguments to the driver (e.g. blk cache=512k).

The configuration file must be called drivers.cfg, and you must supply the update on a physical medium, currently a CD-ROM or a USB flash drive. The boot process looks in the root of the filesystem first, and then in a directory called qnxdrvr. This can help reduce clutter in the root of the filesystem.

The source filesystem can be any of the supported filesystems. These filesystems are known to work:

• standard ISO9660 filesystems on CD-ROM
• DOS (e.g. t7, t11 partition) and QNX 4 (t77, t78, or t79 partition) filesystems on a USB flash drive

If the update is distributed over the web in zip or tar format with the qnxdrvr structure preserved, an end user simply has to download the archive, unzip it to a USB drive, and insert the USB drive on booting.

You can apply a driver update by pressing Space during booting, and then selecting F2. The system then completes the startup of the standard block drivers, giving a source filesystem to apply the update from. You're then prompted to choose the filesystem and insert the update media.

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If you need to rescan the partitions (for example, to find a USB drive that you inserted after booting), press F12.

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Once the files have been copied, you're prompted to reinsert the QNX Momentics installation CD if applicable. The block drivers are then restarted.

This mechanism also lets you update existing drivers or simply modify their arguments (e.g. PCI ID specification).

If you're installing, then the installation program copies the updated drivers to /sbin and the configuration file to /boot/sys. It then makes copies of the standard build files in /boot/build (except multicore ones) and calls them qnxbase-drvrup.build and qnxbasedma-drvrup.build. These files are then used to create new image files called qnxbase-drvrup.ifs and qnxbasedma-drvrup.ifs in /boot/fs. The DMA version of this new file is copied to /.boot, and the non-DMA version is copied to /.altboot.

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The installation program doesn't rebuild multicore (SMP) images.

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Applying a driver update patch after you've installed QNX Neutrino

If you're updating or adding drivers to an already existing QNX Neutrino system using this mechanism, you must manually copy the drivers to the correct directory, and you must modify the boot image to use the new driver:

1. Boot the machine and apply the driver updates.
2. Once the machine has booted, copy the following from the driver update disk used in step 1:
   1. Copy the new devb-* drivers to /sbin.
   2. Copy drivers.cfg to somewhere under /. If you put it in a directory that's in the mkifs search path (e.g. /sbin, /boot/sys), mkifs will find it automatically.
3. Copy the build file (typically qnxbasedma.build) to driverupdate.build.
4. Edit the build file and do the following:
   • Add the names of the new block drivers (devb-*) after devb-eide.
   • Add the drivers.cfg file at the end. If the file is in the mkifs search path, then just add the file name. Otherwise add the full path:

     drivers.cfg=/path/drivers.cfg

5. As a safety precaution (so you'll be sure to have at least one image that boots):

   cp /.boot /.altboot
     

6. mkifs driverupdate.build /.boot

Uninstalling QNX Momentics

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You should uninstall QNX products in the reverse order in which you installed them. To determine this order, use a command like this: ls -lt `find base_directory -name "*uninstall*.sh"` where base_directory is where you installed QNX Momentics.

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If you want to uninstall QNX Momentics completely, simply erase or delete the partition you installed it in.

Determining your base directory

To determine the base directory for QNX Momentics, open a command shell and use the qconfig command. For example:

$ qconfig
QNX Installations

  Installation Name: QNX Momentics 6.3.2
            Version: 6.3.2
     Base Directory: /usr/qnx632/
           QNX_HOST: /usr/qnx632/host/qnx6/x86/
         QNX_TARGET: /usr/qnx632/target/qnx6/

The base directory in this example is /usr/qnx632/, but it could be different on your machine, depending on where you installed QNX Momentics.