[cobalt-developers] Re: [cobaltfacts] Can't boot from disk, but can from ROM

[Duncan Laurie <duncan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for not getting a response out sooner, I'm still trying to catch
up on email after taking some vacation last week and getting sick this
week...

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 17:15, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> Ok,
> 	Still trying to boot from disk to see if my custom kernel for my new
> Gentoo Linux install is any good or not.
> 
> 	I have tried several different versions of roms from sourceforge.net.
> 
> Both v 2.10.1 and v 2.10.2 left me hanging at
> 
> First stage kernel (Linux): Decompressing - done
> 
> And the LCD said Kernel Panic
> 
> Then after a minute the machine would restart itself.
> 
> Now I went back to v 2.10.3 and I now get
> 
> First stage kernel (Linux): Decompressing - done
> ERROR: cannot relocate with filesize 0
> 

This message is indicating that the rom kernel was unable to
correctly/completely load the new kernel from disk.  Any number of
things could be responsible for this so try enabling the CMOS debug flag
and it should show more information on boot:

(these steps are from memory so they may not be 100% correct)

Cobalt:Main Menu> lowlevel
Cobalt:Lowlevel Hardware Menu> cmos
Cobalt:CMOS Menu> cmos_flags debug on

Once this is enabled the ROM should now display the rom kernel boot
messages to the serial port as well as pass the "debug" flag to each
kernel parameter line.  This should hopefully give an indication of
where the load is failing.

> No kernel Panic or restart.
> 
> Now I can do a bfx r d on all the above roms.
> 
> However I can't get the kernel rom, first stage going when booting from
> disk.
> 
> I can boot from the network just fine from all as well.
> 
> Please help I am getting desperate!!!!!!
> 
> This is the last thing I need to do to complete my installation of
> Gentoo on my XTR.

The main difference between the 2.10.1 and the other 2.10.x ROMs so far
has been different kernels in each release.  Since I don't have a wide
variety of hardware to test on these new kernels have caused problems
for some people.  In particular the problem is getting a small enough
universal kernel that will work for all hardware and desired filesystems
and yet still fit in the flash file system.

Version 2.10.3 in particular was based around a plain 2.4.24pre1 (this
was the first 2.4.x kernel with XFS included by default) not the 2.4.19
series and that seems to have caused problems for people.

-duncan