[coreboot] Coreboot on Tyan S2892

Thu Nov 20 18:46:38 CET 2008

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek) <
bijoy.k.anose at lmco.com> wrote:

>  Yes, it is busybox-based, and yes, the final kernel is definitely getting
> run, as evidenced by 'uname -a' output at the busybox
> prompt.  The file '/dev/sda' does exist.. I don't remember the major/minor
> numbers, etc.
>
> My .config file is attached.  I am not modifying the skeleton/* files.
>
>
-Bijoy
>

All right.  The only differences I see are that you are building on a 32-bit
machine and you're building a 32-bit LAB image.
CONFIG_TARGET_64BIT
CONFIG_CHOOSE_64BIT

Since your kernel gets loaded, I don't see why either of those should
matter.  It seems like there's a difference between the way your LAB kernel
and your regular kernel are handling the SATA drive.  Since the LAB kernel
finds and reads it, but yours doesn't...

I hope that helps.

Thanks,
Myles

>  ------------------------------
> *From:* Myles Watson [mailto:mylesgw at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 19, 2008 3:24 PM
> *To:* Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek)
> *Cc:* Ward Vandewege; Coreboot
> *Subject:* Re: [coreboot] Coreboot on Tyan S2892
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek) <
> bijoy.k.anose at lmco.com> wrote:
>
>>  I enabled the busybox option and used the default value of "5 second
>> pause to allow access to busybox" but it doesn't
>> pause anywhere, as far as I can tell.  Coreboot starts, LAB starts, LAB
>> kexecs the kernel/initrd on the SATA disk, and
>> then at that busybox prompt, I get no output when I issue "fdisk -l
>> /dev/sda".
>>
>
> So your kernel/initrd is busybox-based as well?  Is the new kernel really
> getting run?
>
> I'd start with ls -l /dev/sda or something simple like that.
>
>
>>  Could you send me a tarball of your buildrom-devel?
>>
> Since it's old I don't think that would be really helpful.  Are you
> changing the .config files?  Are you changing the skeleton/ files?
>
>
>>    Something must be different in our config.  Also your lab.conf and
>> the kernel/initrd that is on your SATA disk, if that would ok.
>>
> I don't have that machine up right now, so it would take a while.  I think
> there's a shorter path to the answer than that.
>
>
>>  I built my own static kexec and xfer'd it to the SATA drive.
>>
> Great.
>
>
>>  Multiple drives shouldn't make any difference -- if the controller can
>> see one drive, it can see them all (if it is actually
>> working properly).
>>
>
> You're right.  If they don't all work it's a bug.  Maybe it's been fixed.
> If you're only using two drives, though, it's probably not that.
>
>
>>  My system may have 2 drives or 8, depending on its function.  The one
>> I'm currently experimenting
>>
>  with has only 2 installed.
>>
>
>> -Bijoy
>>
>> (sorry again for top-posting, Outlook is acting differently over
>> VPN/rdesktop for some reason)
>>
>>  ------------------------------
>> *From:* Myles Watson [mailto:mylesgw at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 19, 2008 11:19 AM
>> *To:* Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek)
>> *Cc:* Ward Vandewege; Coreboot
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [coreboot] Coreboot on Tyan S2892
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:40 AM, Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek) <
>> bijoy.k.anose at lmco.com> wrote:
>>
>>> > From: Ward Vandewege [mailto:ward at gnu.org]
>>> > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 6:56 PM
>>> > To: Anose, Bijoy K (N-Aerotek)
>>> > Cc: Myles Watson; Marc Jones; Coreboot
>>> > Subject: Re: [coreboot] Coreboot on Tyan S2892
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 07:04:49PM -0500, Anose, Bijoy K
>>> > (N-Aerotek) wrote:
>>> > > > So far it's just me seeing that, on one specific board
>>> > (s2891). So
>>> > > > don't worry about that too much just yet.
>>> > >
>>> > > True, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
>>> > >
>>> > > First I'll need to be able to boot, period.  So far, what
>>> > I've done is
>>>   > > this:
>>> > >
>>> > > 1.  Subversion checkout of latest buildrom 2.  make menuconfig,
>>> > > specifying Tyan S2892, 32-bit LAB 3.  make
>>> > >
>>> > > Do I need to do further configuration (Config.lb etc)?  I
>>> > thought that
>>> > > the menuconfig took care of everything.  Maybe that was wishful
>>> > > thinking..
>>> >
>>> > It's not. The only other thing you need to do is *pre*pend
>>> > the vga image to the generated image, which will generate an
>>> > image that is exactly 1024KB large, and which you can flash,
>>> > and which *should* just boot your system.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I finally got coreboot+LAB to boot my target kernel/initrd on the SATA
>>> disks (many thanks to Ward)!
>>>
>>> However, once the init script in the initrd attempts to assembly the
>>> software
>>> RAID, it fails because it can't see the SATA disks.
>>
>> How many do you have?  Ward has seen a problem with some disk controllers
>> not functioning on the ck804.  I've never used more than one.
>>
>>
>>> My guess is that coreboot is originally doing some low level block reads
>>> from
>>> the disk to load the kernel/initrd but when the final kernel attempts to
>>> do a
>>> SATA read from the disk, the controller has not been fully/properly
>>> initialized,
>>> and it fails.
>>
>>
>> Have you tried configure the busybox shell to not load automatically, and
>> looked at the SATA drives from there?
>>
>> I assume that whatever modifications that Myles made to successfully
>>> boot from
>>> SATA devices with coreboot+LAB on S2892 have trickled down to buildrom..
>>
>> I used buildrom.  I think the multiple drives may be getting you, though.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Myles
>>
>>
>
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