barebox usually needs an environment for storing it's configuration. You can generate an environment using the example-environment contained in arch/sanbox/board/env:
# ./scripts/bareboxenv -s -p 0x10000 arch/sanbox/board/env/ env.bin
To get some files to play with you can generate a cramfs image:
# mkcramfs somedir/ cramfs.bin
The barebox image is a normal Linux executable, so it can be started just like every other program:
# ./barebox -e env.bin -i cramfs.bin
barebox 2010.10.0 (Oct 29 2010 - 13:47:17)
loading environment from /dev/env0
barebox\> /
Specifying -[ie] <file> tells barebox to map the file as a device under /dev. Files given with '-e' will appear as /dev/env[n]. Files given with '-i' will appear as /dev/fd[n].
If barebox finds a valid configuration sector on /dev/env0, it will be loaded into /env and executes /env/init if existing. The default environment from the example above will show up a menu asking for the relevant settings.
If you have started barebox as root you will find a new tap device on your host which you can configure using ifconfig. Once configured with valid network addresses, barebox can be used to ping the host machine or to fetch files with tftp.
# mkdir /cram # mount /dev/fd0 cramfs /cram
Memory can be examined using md/mw commands. They both understand the -f <file> option to tell the commands that they should work on the specified files instead of /dev/mem (which holds the complete address space). Note that if you call 'md /dev/fd0' (without -f), barebox will segfault on the host, because it will interpret /dev/fd0 as a number.
1.5.6