Help needed (LinuxBIOS & FILO on EPIA5000)

[Sven Lübke]

Hi all!

I tried to install LinuxBIOS in my EPIA board, but with no luck. I don't have
a serial null-modem cable, so I can't see debugging information :-(.

I read the HOW TO for EPIA boards and used FILO as payload, cause I want
to boot from IDE. In FILO I edited the file "Config" and changed only:

AUTOBOOT_FILE = "hda5:/vmlinuz"

FILO compiles without problems and creates an ELF file, which is 34 KB in size.

Then I edited the file "epia.config" (changed only "payload 
/root/filo-0.1/filo.elf"),
ran the python script, executed "make clean" and "make" in the target 
folder and
linuxbios compiles with no problem. I burned the file "romimage" into the 
flash, rebooted
but nothing is happening :-((. I tried the same with extracting the 
VGA-Bios and creating a
combined payload with no result also! Am I doing something wrong?

I have three questions anyway:

1. In "epia.config" there is the option PAYLOAD_SIZE! Do I have to change
it to the size of the "filo.elf" payload?? I tried it, but it's not working 
nevertheless...

2. Is FILO compatible with the ext3 filesystem? I am using it in my root 
partition,
but read, that ext2 and ext3 are compatible! Is that my failure?

3. Is VGA support for the EPIA5000 possible in this combination?

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,

Sven

[SONE Takeshi]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 10:32:05AM +0200, Sven Lübke wrote:
> In FILO I edited the file "Config" and changed only:
> AUTOBOOT_FILE = "hda5:/vmlinuz"

If this file is the bzImage format kernel, FILO can't load it (yet).
Use mkelfImage from ftp://ftp.lnxi.com/pub/mkelfImage/
to convert your vmlinuz to ELF.
> In "epia.config" there is the option PAYLOAD_SIZE! Do I have to change
>
> it to the size of the "filo.elf" payload?? I tried it, but it's not working 
> nevertheless...

I have never tried to change that option.
> Is FILO compatible with the ext3 filesystem? I am using it in my root
>
> partition,
> but read, that ext2 and ext3 are compatible! Is that my failure?

FILO works with ext3 just fine. In fact I'm using ext3 too.
Filesystem routines are from GNU GRUB and it's been compatilbe with ext3
for quite a while.
> Is VGA support for the EPIA5000 possible in this combination?

Yes, it's working on my EPIA 5000.
However, VGA support (either VGABIOS or direct access) is not stable yet,
it works for some of us but not for others.

You definitely need a serial cable to see what is going on.

I have several fixes to VGABIOS support, which should increase
compatibility, and I believe David and Ron at LANL are working
on it to integrate it to the tree.

[Sven Luebke]

At 18:24 19.09.2003 +0900, SONE Takeshi wrote:

Hi Takeshi!
> > In FILO I edited the file "Config" and changed only:
> > AUTOBOOT_FILE = "hda5:/vmlinuz"
>
> If this file is the bzImage format kernel, FILO can't load it (yet).
> Use mkelfImage from ftp://ftp.lnxi.com/pub/mkelfImage/
> to convert your vmlinuz to ELF.

Thank you, that was my first failure! I had to replace the binutils package,
which was installed with my Debian distribution, to get the ELF image
(otherwise an internal error occured). Which command-line parameters
do I have to use if I want VGA support? I used:

mkelfImage --kernel=/usr/src/linux-2.4.21/arch/i386/boot/bzImage \
                      --output=/vmlinuz.elf \
                      --command-line="console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/hda5"
> > In "epia.config" there is the option PAYLOAD_SIZE! Do I have to change
> >
> > it to the size of the "filo.elf" payload?? I tried it, but it's not
>
> working
> > nevertheless...
>
> I have never tried to change that option.

Ok, then I do not change it also...
> > Is FILO compatible with the ext3 filesystem? I am using it in my root
> >
> > partition,
> > but read, that ext2 and ext3 are compatible! Is that my failure?
>
> FILO works with ext3 just fine. In fact I'm using ext3 too.
> Filesystem routines are from GNU GRUB and it's been compatilbe with ext3
> for quite a while.

Oh, that's great, because I don't have to convert from ext3 to ext2!
> You definitely need a serial cable to see what is going on.

Yes, you are right. I build a nullmodem cable to see the debug infos, but
Linuxbios isn't very "verbose" :-):

------------------ begin -----------
0

LinuxBIOS-1.0.0 Fri Sep 19 13:58:31 CEST 2003 starting...
------------------- end --------------

That's the last message...

Any idea? Is it better to deactivate VGA support first and get the rest 
working first?

Thank you so much for your help!

Best regards,

Sven

[SONE Takeshi]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 02:33:39PM +0200, Sven Luebke wrote:
> mkelfImage --kernel=/usr/src/linux-2.4.21/arch/i386/boot/bzImage \
>                      --output=/vmlinuz.elf \
>                      --command-line="console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/hda5"

That looks ok.
> ------------------ begin -----------
> 0
>
> LinuxBIOS-1.0.0 Fri Sep 19 13:58:31 CEST 2003 starting...
> ------------------- end --------------
>
> That's the last message...

Looks like it successfully initialized the serial port but
failed to initialize DRAM.
What kind of RAM do you use? (size, single or double side, speed, etc..)

If you have a POST card you can see how far it goes.
Otherwise, you have to insert some CONSOLE_DEBUG_TX_STRING macros
in (perhaps) freebios/src/northbridge/via/vt8601/raminit.inc
to see it.
> Any idea? Is it better to deactivate VGA support first and get the rest 
> working first?

That's a good idea.

[Steve Gehlbach]

SONE Takeshi wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 10:32:05AM +0200, Sven Lübke wrote:
> > In FILO I edited the file "Config" and changed only:
> > AUTOBOOT_FILE = "hda5:/vmlinuz"
>
> If this file is the bzImage format kernel, FILO can't load it (yet).

"Yet" means maybe soon? I am very much interested in booting bzImage. 
Eric has pointed out that putting the startup code for bzImage in the 
linuxbios flash makes it tied to one method of booting, that may change 
as Linux changes.  But if you have a file system aware bootloader, then 
maybe we could put the startup code in an image file on the filesystem. 
     Actually I don't care that much about whether it is in the flash or 
not, but others may. I have done the Linux startup code many times, if 
you want any additional code samples.  One thing that is needed is to 
completely support the settings in the zero page, particularly the video 
mode and x,y cursor location.

Booting vmlinuz with linuxbios would reduce newby questions on this ML 
significantly, since most who try linuxbios for the first time expect it 
to do this until they read the fine print (IMHO).

-Steve