On Fri, Jan 29, 1999 at 09:03:15AM -0700, Jim Reiss wrote: > Over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get Linux/MIPS > installed on a Magnum 4000, and over the last couple of days have had > some success. There's one thing, though, which is really slowing me down. > It seems that I can only boot the kernel from a floppy disk (which takes > forever because reads and writes are so slow on this hardware). It's a workaround for a firmware bug on the Magnum. Once one has called the firmware function Seek() for the first time any attempt to do Read() of more than 512 bytes will crash the machine, so we have to Read() little bits of 512 bytes. Which is horribly slow. (Note that the firmware is (C) by Microsoft ...) > I have placed > a 10 MB MS-DOS partition at the beginning of the first hard drive and put > milo, pandora, and a vmlinux on it. I can run milo or pandora fine from > that DOS partition, but the linux kernel always hangs after printing a > few lines (the last line is the "Console: Colour G364 128x48" one)...most of > the screen is white on red, while the kernel messages are white on black. > This also happens sometimes with the floppy boot, but not consistently. > Has anyone else seen this problem? Is there anything I can try? I'd > appreciate any help anyone can offer. I received such bug reports ages ago, they're supposed to be fixed. Does your screen more or less jump up by a random number of lines; the red area on the bottom of the screen is filled with random garbage? The solution is to use a newer version of Milo. You should be using at least version 0.27; 0.27.1 is current. Note that the current kernels doesn't need Milo anymore for booting. You can for example run it from the firmware function ``Execute command'' (Or whatever it's called on a Magnum, I don't have one) as something like c:\vmlinux or scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\vmlinux. Something like that. (I'm working on reviving Milo such that it can be used to boot kernels directly from ext2 partitions of any supported device. For now you'll have to have the kernel on ISO9660 CD-ROMs or a FAT filesystems.) > There are also a couple of other issues I was wondering about. One of them > is the "sonic" ethernet driver. The version number in the kernel I'm > using (2.1.90) is v0.50, but in linux-2.2.0 the driver says it's version 0.10. > I thought all of the Magnum changes had been put in the Linux kernel sometime > after 2.1.100...did this slip through, get renumbered, or something else? Linus' kernel release still doesn't have the full MIPS stuff; it isn't even supposed to be compilable. Since chances to get this done for 2.2 were not so good I didn't even bother to send all the updates to Linus on a regular base. I don't know where you got a version 0.50 from; the version in our CVS, Vger's CVS and Linus' release are all 0.10. Have to check if something got messed up. Instead get the sources from our anonymous ftp server or via anonymous CVS: cvs -d :pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/cvs login (Only needed the first time you use anonymous CVS, the password is "cvs") cvs -d :pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/cvs co <repository> where you insert linux, libc, or gdb for <repository>. Currently our kernels are based on Linux 2.1.131; they have successfully tested on Olivetti M700-10 which is 99.9% a Magnum clone. > Also, I am having trouble building the linux-magnum-980323.tar.gz kernel > source from ftp.linux.sgi.com. On an Intel Linux system, using the > cross-development tools binutils-2.7-3.tar.gz and gcc-2.7.2-3.tar.gz (from > sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/ALPHA/mips, I get the following assembly language > errors: Last I checked Sunsite was a mirror of ftp.fnet.fr which I haven't updated in _ages_. My fault. Everything you should ever need should be available on ftp.linux.sgi.com. > int-handler.S: Assembler messages: > int-handler.S:66: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:72: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:75: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:150: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:222: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:240: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:241: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > int-handler.S:264: Error: .previous without corresponding .section; ignored > > Do I need a newer binutils? Some change to the configuration? Yes, that's an as bug. There are also much newer kernels available on ftp.linux.sgi.com. In order to use them you'll have to upgrade gcc and binutils to a newer version. At this time egcs-1.0.2 + patches and binutils-2.8.1 + patches is recommended; I haven't released binaries of these. However, in order to make your live so much easier, just get a kernel binary from ftp.linux.sgi.com:/pub/linux/mips/. Native RPM packages of many of the tools are also available there. (Yes, installing Linux on the Magnum is for the adventurous even though at this time it is supposed to run reliable.) Ralf
