Getting Started

What do you need to get started with Jumpstarter?

1: Concepts

To start using Jumpstarter you need a test-harness (i.e., a dutlink-board) and a device under test (DUT).

You will also need an image to flash into your DUT, it could be an .iso or a raw device image. In the case of the dutlink-board, this image is flashed on a usb storage device which then can be attached to the DUT.

Installation

# install jumpstarter binary
wget https://github.com/jumpstarter-dev/jumpstarter/releases/download/${JUMPSTARTER_VERSION}/jumpstarter-${JUMPSTARTER_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf jumpstarter-${JUMPSTARTER_VERSION}-linux-amd64.tar.gz
export PATH=${PATH}:$(pwd)

Setup

If you will be using a test harness that works through USB (like the dutlink-board), it is recommended to use a physical host. QEMU is still possible but you will need to pass through the whole USB host controller to the VM, this is recommended because the USB devices will come and go as devices are manipulated through the test-harness.

Hello World

You can use the jumpstarter list-devices command to get a list of detected devices from your drivers.

1 - Concepts

In this section you can find a more detailed explanation of the concepts used in the Jumpstarter project.

Concept	Definition
Testing Harness	This is the physical device used to allow Jumpstarter interfacing into your hardware, one example of this is the dutlink-board which is an Open Hardware reference design for Jumpstarter. But other Testing Harnesses can exist.
DUT	Device Under Test: This is the device that you connect to your
Serial console	Embedded devices and most servers have one or multiple serial consoles. A serial console allows you to transmit and receive bytes via a TX and RX line (plus Ground), sometimes in RS-232 physical voltage levels, sometimes in digital voltage levels (i.e. 3.3v, 1.8v, etc..), most bootloaders, UEFI bios, and the kernel can communicate through a serial console. i.e. the kernel accepts the `console` parameter to let you direct the main kernel output and console, for example using the kernel parameter `console=ttyS0,115200`. In jumpstarter we use the console as a the main communication method to Edge devices, with the purpose of monitoring and automation