Zan Lynx wrote:
> Brian Szymanski wrote:
>
>> David Medberry wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 14:21 -0400, Brian Szymanski wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I'm having sporatic failures to boot on an sgi750 (2x733MHz Merced)
>>>> which I've recently obtained. Once the system is up, however, it's rock
>>>> solid, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware problem. Also, the problem
>>>> occurs whether booting from CD or booting from the hard drive. If I try
>>>> to boot from the CD, the error looks like this:
>>>>
>>>> CD:
>>>> Uncompressing Linux... done
>>>> Loading file \initrd.gz... done
>>>> [ flashing cursor mocks me until i reboot ]
>>>>
>>>> HD:
>>>> Uncompressing Linux... done
>>>> Loading file \EFI\debian\initrd.gz... done
>>>> [ flashing cursor mocks me until i reboot ]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This is typical if the console is NOT where you think it was at.
>>> You should see what CONSOLE= parameter is being passed in your elilo
>>> config.
>>>
>>> I'd guess that the working config has a different CONSOLE= than those
>>> that don't work. You can also just run through different answers. (In
>>> addition to the serial port being wrong, the baud could also be
>>> wrong--try a variety 9600 and up.)
>>>
>>>
>> Sorry, I wasn't clear. This is VGA output - I'm not using a serial
>> console. The problem occurs about 1/2 the time, with the same boot media
>> and no other changes.
>>
>> PS - I also should have said reset, not reboot, as I have to power the
>> system off and on after this happens - keyboard input seems to go to
>> /dev/null at this point.
>>
>
> I used to have a very similar problem on my Compaq DL590/64. I fixed it
> by adding "console=tty0" to the ELILO kernel argument list. It was
> doing just what David said, semi-randomly choosing between VGA and
> serial console. I have no idea why.
>
Unfortunately, I added this to elilo.conf (see attach), ran elilo, and
rebooted... And the behavior is the same. If I had thought about it I
wouldn't have expected it to work anyway, since when the system is
unpingable as well when it stops outputting text, even after a few
minutes (I guess it's possible the kernel blocks waiting for the serial
console, but that seems unlikely) ... Maybe it's time to start poking in
the BIOS...
Thanks again for the ideas so far... Any others?
Thanks,
Brian
--
Brian Szymanski
## elilo configuration file generated by elilo 3.6-3.1
install=/usr/lib/elilo/elilo.efi
boot=/dev/sda1
delay=20
default=Linux
append="console=tty0"
relocatable
image=/vmlinuz
label=Linux
root=/dev/sda3
read-only
initrd=/initrd.img
append="console=tty0"
image=/vmlinuz.old
label=LinuxOLD
root=/dev/sda3
read-only
initrd=/initrd.img.old
append="console=tty0"
