Mailing List Archive

Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25)
Hi Jeff,

[...snip...]

>I have access to two
>machines I have not been able to boot 2005.0 on: an
>old XL366 ("white box", MILO only)
>
>
[...snip...]

That's a surprise to me, as I booted 2005.0 with the 2.4 kernel on my
XL366 through MILO just about a week ago to reinstall from scratch after
total data loss. It worked fine, though I couldn't boot the 2.6 kernel
(which is probably a known issue for MILO-only machines).

What boot command are you using? Here's mine :

boot sr0:/boot/gentoo_2.4 initrd=/boot/gentoo_2_4.igz root=/dev/ram0
init=/linuxrc looptype=zisofs loop=/zisofs noudev devfs cdroot

(as stated in bug #94788 - http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94788)

J-S

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Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25) [ In reply to ]
--- Jean-Sébastien Guay <jean_seb@videotron.ca> wrote:

> Hi Jeff,

Hey...

> [...snip...]
>
> That's a surprise to me, as I booted 2005.0 with the
> 2.4 kernel on my
> XL366 through MILO just about a week ago

<snip>

>
> What boot command are you using? Here's mine :
>
> boot sr0:/boot/gentoo_2.4
> initrd=/boot/gentoo_2_4.igz root=/dev/ram0
> init=/linuxrc looptype=zisofs loop=/zisofs noudev
> devfs cdroot
>
> (as stated in bug #94788 -
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94788)


Ok, I don't know what I was doing before, but your
command above worked (once I typed it right). I might
not have specified "noudev devfs" before. I don't
remember. Do you get a warning during boot (from the
LiveCD that is) saying it "could not unmount the
initrd" or something like that? I did.

Ok, one problem down. You said you are running 2.6
kernel on your XLT, right? I've had problems getting
that going too. Could you send or post your XLT kernel
config file?

Thanks a bunch.
Jeff D



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Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25) [ In reply to ]
Hi again Jeff,

>Ok, I don't know what I was doing before, but your
>command above worked (once I typed it right). I might
>not have specified "noudev devfs" before. I don't
>remember.
>
Basically, what I did was look at the /etc/aboot.conf file on the CD.
The command is basically the same, just correct the paths (but as I
mentioned, the 2.6 kernel didn't boot at all for me).

>Do you get a warning during boot (from the
>LiveCD that is) saying it "could not unmount the
>initrd" or something like that? I did.
>
>
If I did, I didn't notice. But the installation went well, so if I got
that error it didn't matter.

>Ok, one problem down. You said you are running 2.6
>kernel on your XLT, right? I've had problems getting
>that going too. Could you send or post your XLT kernel
>config file?
>
>
Sure, here you go. (vanilla-sources-2.6.11.8 config file) Note that I
have a few modules you might not need, so tweak those parts as needed.
In particular, I enabled the legacy tulip driver as well as the de2104x
one because I didn't remember which one worked on my machine, and same
thing for my Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 (e100 and eepro100, I can never
remember which one works until I try both...).

I think basically, the important thing is the system type setting (set
to Alcor/XLT) and the next switch that specifies that you have an ev56
processor (boolean). Setting system type to generic would also work, but
it presumably disables some optimisations, and setting system type to
Alcor/XLT without checking the ev56 switch makes kernel that doesn't
boot on XL366.

Other than that, I followed the "Configuring your kernel" part of the
Gentoo Handbook, so nothing special there.

BTW, kudos to the Gentoo project for the quality of its documentation!

Good luck,

--
___________________________________________
Jean-Sébastien Guay jean_seb@videotron.ca
http://whitestar02.webhop.org/
Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25) [ In reply to ]
J-S,

Thanks for the config file. I'll give it a go.

General question to the list - what is recommended
these days for 2.6 Alpha kernels : vanilla-sources or
gentoo-sources ? In general, what is the difference
anyway?

Jeff D

p.s. I 100% agree that Gentoo documentation quality
rocks. Other open source projects should take a
lesson.





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Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25) [ In reply to ]
On Wed, June 8, 2005 21:07, Jean-Sébastien Guay said:
> That's a surprise to me, as I booted 2005.0 with the 2.4 kernel on my
> XL366 through MILO just about a week ago to reinstall from scratch after
> total data loss. It worked fine, though I couldn't boot the 2.6 kernel
> (which is probably a known issue for MILO-only machines).

I can confirm this; I just tried the 2005.0 CD on my XLT-300. 2.4 boots
fine, 2.6 hangs right after loading the kernel image.

Marnix.

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Re: Booting 2005.0 on XL366 (was: Gentoo on Alpha DS25) [ In reply to ]
Hi Jeff,

>General question to the list - what is recommended
>these days for 2.6 Alpha kernels : vanilla-sources or
>gentoo-sources ? In general, what is the difference
>anyway?
>
>
Reading the little information available on packages.gentoo.org, it
seems that gentoo-sources has some Gentoo specific patches applied to
it, though I can't find any more details. vanilla-sources seems to be
kept more up to date, and in the installation section of the Handbook it
suggests that one too, so it's the one I use...

Others may have more info on the specific differences...

J-S

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___________________________________________
Jean-Sébastien Guay jean_seb@videotron.ca
http://whitestar02.webhop.org/

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