Connecting to the ZedBoard / Simulation

During your work in the lab you will be switching between simulation and accessing the physical ZedBoards.

• ZedBoards are located physically in 009 Hayden H. They are connected through to the network. Each ZedBoard has an own IP address reachable from within Northeastern (or via VPN from outside).

• To connect to a ZedBoard

  ssh <UserName>@zed<BoardNumber>.nuesl.org

  BoardNumber is a single digit 1-7 (e.g. ssh zed1.nuesl.org).

  The access credentials (<UserName> and password) will be distributed to you by the TA at the first day of lab.

  In case the board is not accessible even after a reboot, an IP address may not have yet propagated DNS. You can look up the information on DuckDNS: zed1, zed2, zed3, zed4, zed5, zed6, zed7

• QEMU/Simulation is reachable via qemu hostname as setup (Home, COE) and usage described in ARMXCompSim

For working on a lab, we don’t want to hard code / change the connection information into the Makefiles (e.g. for calling make upload). For flexible access, the makefiles use the environment variable ESL_ZEDBOARD_IP. Select the desired target by setting this environment variable. Eg. for simulation:

export ESL_ZEDBOARD_IP=qemu 

Replace qemu with the ZedBoard address to connect to a physcial ZedBoard.

Consider using ssh public key authentication to avoid having to enter the password on each new connection.

Note that the ZedBoards are a shared resource across Wed/Thur lab teams. Do not store source code and privately sensitive information on the ZedBoard. In normal operation, only storing binaries should be sufficient (source code stays on your development machine/directory where cross compilation happens).

You can access the ZedBoards when not in the lab. But please make sure that lab groups don’t step on each other (e.g. check with w for the currently active sessions after logging in).

Get ZedBoard IP via Serial Connection

You can SSH into the board using a USB serial connection to find out the IP address.

1. Connect to the board using the serial port (USB connector labelled UART)
2. Using a a serial terminal (e.g. putty or Tera Term on windows; screen on linux), connect to the ZedBoard. The baudrate should be set to 115200.
3. Once connected, hit Enter to see the login prompt and login using the credentials
4. Get the local IP address by:

   ip addr
   

Direct Connection to ZedBoard

As a special case you could directly connect to the ZedBoard. This should not be needed for the typical lab setup as the boards are available by IP within NEU. ZedBoardEthernet describes how to directly connect to the ZedBoard.