[OpenBIOS] ppc64 boot issues

Mark Cave-Ayland mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk
Thu Dec 9 11:30:34 CET 2010


Andreas Färber wrote:

> Here's what I found out so far:
> 
> * a breakpoint for bootinfo_loader_init() or so is not reached
> * The "Trying" comes from (encode-bootpath) in forth/debugging/client.fs
> * `debug (encode-bootpath) boot` does not return from open-dev
> * `debug open-dev` does not return from path-resolution
> * path-resolution gets called "endlessly" (5+ times single-stepping it), 
> the hang occurred after successfully returning from some instance (after 
> having successfully done so for a previous instance)
> 
> Does anyone have a hunch what might be going wrong? Or tips how to 
> further debug?

Hi Andreas,

Do you mean path-resolution or (path-resolution)? IIRC (path-resolution) 
is called recursively for each level of the device so this could 
potentially happen depending upon the device tree.

The "cd:,\\:tbxi" device is a reference to finding a file on a HFS file 
system with a particular filesystem label/type in the MacOS System 
folder to boot. So given that CONFIG_HFS and CONFIG_HFSP are set for 
PPC64, if you're trying to access a HFS file system then it should be 
hitting hfs_fs.c::hfs_files_open() or hfsp_fs.c::hfsp_files_open() - 
maybe there are some 64-bit related errors in the code there? Tracing 
through libopenbios/load.c may help here too.

Alternatively if this is not the case, you may be hitting some generic 
memory corruption. I had a similar error on SPARC64 with strange 
behaviour caused by the dictionary being accidentally overwritten.


HTH,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
PostgreSQL - PostGIS
Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
t: +44 870 608 0063

Sirius Labs: http://www.siriusit.co.uk/labs



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