Mailing List Archive

DL Harrison wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> It's exam time again and that means procastination time - as such I recently
> attempted to build gentoo again on my O2 using kumbas netboot kernel :
>
> ip32-r5k-20050128.img
>
> and the boot command of bootp():root=/dev/ram0
>
> This has REALLY not gone well thus far.
>
> 1) Nano wont open, returning the message: cannot open libncurses something
> something .so

My Fault. I keep forgetting to fix the bloody thing. Might be regenerating a
new netboot in a few days/next week to resolve this.

Busybox 'vi' is included as a workaround, even though that's a rather cruel
thing to use.


> 2) Fdisk is behaving rather strangely only allowing me to build partitions
> backwards ie from 1016 (4.5 gb disk) down. If I attempt to make a partition
> from 1 - 100 ,say, the next time I ask for a new partition it gives the the
> start point of (1-0) and refuses any further input!!!!

fdisk was given an 'R' rating by the MPAA for Horrific Scenes of Code, and
Graphic Portrayals of Violence by its users.

Specificially stated, it b0rks up often, and usually without reason. Trick #1,
is wipe the disk partition table out with this command (Often referred to as the
"Nuclear Option"):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

Then re-create the SGI Disklabel (Under eXpert menu), and see if that lets you
work fine. You may have to delete the Volume Header partition and re-create
that to make it larger (and it sometimes avoids the 1-0 start cylinder issue).


> 3) After working in the stupid backwards way to get myself a boot,swap and main
> partition, with of course the SGI volhdr and volume it now refuses to mount.
> The command
>
> mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo
> (mounting my main partition on the gentoo area)
> it returns a file or directory not found error, even though fdisk printout shows
> that sda3 exits.

Forget to format the partition? :)

You may also need to reboot to make the kernel pick up on the partitions, which
seems to be a new thing AFAICT, as I didn't have to deal with that before.
Again, blame fdisk.


--Kumba

--
"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." --Elrond
--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list

> Busybox 'vi' is included as a workaround, even though that's a rather cruel
> thing to use.

VI THE PAIN OMG NOES, yes it was painful but it worked and allowed me to
actually connect to the net with that fat blue beast of an O2.


> You may have to delete the Volume Header partition and re-create
> that to make it larger (and it sometimes avoids the 1-0 start cylinder
> issue).
>

This worked thanks for the heads up on that weird bug, Fdisk is pretty random.


> Forget to format the partition? :)
>
> You may also need to reboot to make the kernel pick up on the partitions,
> which
> seems to be a new thing AFAICT, as I didn't have to deal with that before.
> Again, blame fdisk.
>

Went through the whole formatting and rebooting process but this didnt fix the
problem. I can mount directly to /mnt but not to any subdir inside it as it
gives me the File or directory not found problem. It is also impossible to
create folders inside mnt as it is a read only filesystem. Would it be
possible to build the system just in /mnt ?
Also does anyone know roughly how big should a boot partition be (newbie++
questions)?

Duncan Harrison.


--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list

> Went through the whole formatting and rebooting process but this didnt fix the
> problem. I can mount directly to /mnt but not to any subdir inside it as it
> gives me the File or directory not found problem. It is also impossible to
> create folders inside mnt as it is a read only filesystem. Would it be
> possible to build the system just in /mnt ?
> Also does anyone know roughly how big should a boot partition be (newbie++
> questions)?

Don't use a /boot partition (this is because if we ever get 64-bit
arcboot support, it won't support this configuration). Also, the mips
netboots use /gentoo instead of /mnt/gentoo as a mountpoint. You should
be able to mount your root partition and then subsequent other
partitions on /gentoo/<blah>.

-Steve
--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list

Stephen P. Becker wrote:
>
> Don't use a /boot partition (this is because if we ever get 64-bit
> arcboot support, it won't support this configuration). Also, the mips
> netboots use /gentoo instead of /mnt/gentoo as a mountpoint. You should
> be able to mount your root partition and then subsequent other
> partitions on /gentoo/<blah>.
>

Following up, while the ramdisk is mounted as read-only, a simple

# mount / -o remount,rw

Will make it read-write.


--Kumba

--
"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." --Elrond
--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list