On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:11:28 -0600, ron minnich wrote
- when booting linuxbios on a new machine, ALWAYS configure the kernel as an i386. It's just safer that way. Turn off everything you
can. make sure what you're doing would work on a 1990-era PC.
Tried with a pure i386-kernel, same result :(
- always enable serial and, before you try linuxbios, run minicom on the machine and make sure serial REALLY works. This is also a good cable test. Take nothing for granted.
It works alright! Has been running it from day one ;)
- If it's legal where you live, always burn a copy of the fuctory bios and boot with that, to ensure your burn path is totally working. Again, if it is legal where you live, keep a spare copy of fuctory bios around for that inevitable time when you screw up and flash over it.
I've got a BIOS-savior, and I run the BIOS in that. I don't think it will make any difference pulling the savior out and place LB in the original socket.
- never try VGA on the first time around. It adds too much variation
I'm not quite sure how to manage that. Everytime I've tried just leaving out the "cat /root/113mem.bin fallback/linuxbios.rom > ./linuxbios.rom" I end up with a nonbootable prom. Is there any other changes to be done to make it work?
- use earlyprintk! earlyprintk=ttyS0,115200,keep
Tried that, no special output at all. ( See below. ) What I did was to make sure kernel is compiled with CONFIG_EARLY_PRINTK=y and adding the above line to my commandline:
mkelfImage --kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16.19-i386 \ --output=/vmlinuz-i386-ep.elf \ --initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.16.19-i386.img \ --command-line="ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintk=ttyS0,115200,keep"
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Jumping to boot code at 0x109ad4 FILO version 0.5 (root@mm.int.mmtab.se) Wed May 31 13:44:15 CEST 2006 Press <Enter> for default boot, or <Esc> for boot prompt... boot: hda1:/vmlinuz-i386-ep.elf find_ide_controller: found PCI IDE controller 1106:0571 prog_if=0x8a find_ide_controller: primary channel: compatibility mode find_ide_controller: cmd_base=0x1f0 ctrl_base=0x3f4 ide_software_reset: Waiting for ide0 to become ready for reset... ok init_drive: Testing for hda init_drive: Probing for hda init_drive: LBA mode, sectors=268435455 init_drive: LBA48 mode, sectors=321672960 init_drive: Init device params... ok hda: LBA48 164GB: HDS722516VLAT80 Mounted ext2fs Loading Linux version 2.6.16.19-i386 (root@mm.int.mmtab.se) #4 Mon Jun 12 10:46:16 CEST 2006... Jumping to entry point... 0
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- learn to use initramfs, and have it boot a simple shell (I'm just getting the hang of this, but it's very useful) (you can write a shell in surprisingly small space)
I'd love to, as soon as I can get the kernel to load at all.
- spontaneous reboots almost always mean that you have the wrong cpu type. See note (1) above. very quick reboots are a good hint that memory is getting errors. Lockups are a sign of bad memory programming (you wouldn't believe some of the failures I've seen) or you've got an old VIA chipset with a bug :-) For any but the worst reboots, earlyprintk is a big help.
[root@mm linux-2.6.16.19]# lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP] 00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 82) 00:0a.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 82) 00:0d.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80) 00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) 00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) 00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80) 00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82) 00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge 00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) 00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50) 00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] integrated CastleRock graphics (rev 03)
[root@mm linux-2.6.16.19]# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : CentaurHauls cpu family : 6 model : 9 model name : VIA Nehemiah stepping : 8 cpu MHz : 1199.924 cache size : 64 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr cx8 mtrr pge cmov pat mmx fxsr sse rng rng_en ace ace_en bogomips : 2403.34
/Per