With two weeks tinkering I've managed to get some C-code running on the microprocessor. This involved building a cross-compiler and tool-chain for ARM ELF binary format, compiling sample code, setting up non-root access to the JTAG interface dongle and configuring a debugger, OpenOCD, for programming. In detail:

• Grab sample code from the Olimex web page and unpack it
  http://www.olimex.com/dev/stm32-h103.html
  
  
• Bring the make file up to scratch to correctly invoke our new gcc. The linker script supplied by Olimex worked OK for me.
  

[chris@chris-desktop stm-h103]$ cat makefile
NAME   = demoh103_blink_rom

CC      = arm-elf-gcc
LD      = arm-elf-ld -v
AR      = arm-elf-ar
AS      = arm-elf-as
CP      = arm-elf-objcopy
OD     = arm-elf-objdump
 
CFLAGS  =  -I./ -c -fno-common -O0 -g -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb
AFLAGS  = -ahls -mapcs-32 -o crt.o
LFLAGS  = -Tstm_h103_blink_rom.cmd -nostartfiles
CPFLAGS = -Obinary
ODFLAGS    = -S

all: test

clean:
    -rm a.lst main.lst main.o main.out main.hex main.map stm32f10x_rcc.o stm32f10x_gpio.o

test: main.out
    $(CP) $(CPFLAGS) main.out main.bin
    $(OD) $(ODFLAGS) main.out > main.list

main.out: main.o stm32f10x_rcc.o stm32f10x_gpio.o stm_h103_blink_rom.cmd
    $(LD) $(LFLAGS) -o main.out  main.o stm32f10x_rcc.o stm32f10x_gpio.o

crt.o: crt.s
    $(AS) $(AFLAGS) crt.s > crt.lst

stm32f10x_rcc.o: stm32f10x_rcc.c
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) stm32f10x_rcc.c
     
stm32f10x_gpio.o: stm32f10x_gpio.c
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) stm32f10x_gpio.c
     
main.o: main.c
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) main.c

• Build the code. Check the bin-file is reasonably sized with only one section

[chris@chris-desktop stm-h103]$ make
arm-elf-gcc -I./ -c -fno-common -O0 -g -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb  main.c
arm-elf-gcc -I./ -c -fno-common -O0 -g -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb  stm32f10x_rcc.c
arm-elf-gcc -I./ -c -fno-common -O0 -g -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb  stm32f10x_gpio.c
arm-elf-ld -v -Tstm_h103_blink_rom.cmd -nostartfiles -o main.out  main.o stm32f10x_rcc.o stm32f10x_gpio.o
GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.18 + coff-avr-patch (20050630)
arm-elf-objcopy -Obinary main.out main.bin
arm-elf-objdump -S main.out > main.list
[chris@chris-desktop stm-h103]$ arm-elf-size main.out
   text       data        bss        dec        hex    filename
   3996          0         12       4008        fa8    main.out

• Launch openocd server using the board and interface files
  
• Default configurations shipped with Fedora's OpenOCD package worked fine for me
• Note: the board configuration includes the target configuration for you
  

[chris@chris-desktop stm-h103]$ openocd --file /usr/share/openocd/scripts/board/olimex_stm32_h103.cfg \
    --file /usr/share/openocd/scripts/interface/olimex-jtag-tiny.cfg

• Telnet to the debugger (based on http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/openocd-development/2009-February/004675.html)
  
• Wipe the flash memory - required or the flash fails
  
• write the binary to flash memory (built above)
• reset the target and allow it to run the code
  

[chris@chris-desktop ~]$ telnet localhost 4444
Trying ::1...
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Open On-Chip Debugger
> reset init
JTAG tap: stm32.cpu tap/device found: 0x3ba00477 (mfg: 0x23b, part: 0xba00, ver: 0x3)
JTAG Tap/device matched
JTAG tap: stm32.bs tap/device found: 0x16410041 (mfg: 0x020, part: 0x6410, ver: 0x1)
JTAG Tap/device matched
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0x01000000 pc: 0xfffffffe
> flash erase_sector 0 0 127
erased sectors 0 through 127 on flash bank 0 in 0.033968s
> flash write_bank 0 main.bin 0
wrote  3996 byte from file main.bin to flash bank 0 at offset 0x00000000 in 0.260933s (14.955348 kb/s)
> reset init
JTAG tap: stm32.cpu tap/device found: 0x3ba00477 (mfg: 0x23b, part: 0xba00, ver: 0x3)
JTAG Tap/device matched
JTAG tap: stm32.bs tap/device found: 0x16410041 (mfg: 0x020, part: 0x6410, ver: 0x1)
JTAG Tap/device matched
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0x01000000 pc: 0x00000010
> resume
>

And lo, behold LED flasher. In the old days I could have built this using a 555 chip and got change from a quid...