I'm trying to boot a net4801 and do an NFS root mount. (This is something I have done dozens, if not hundreds of times before.)
I have Debian installed on the system that is acting as the NFS server. I installed debootstrap and ran "debootstrap etch /usr/local/nfsroot/etch" After debootstrap completes, I go to /usr/local/nfsroot/etch and configure the directory hierarchy for NFS root mounting. Since most everything is working, I'll skip most of the details. DHCP is setup and working. TFTP is working. NFS is working, etc... When I type "boot f0" at the Soekris box, the net4801 gets an IP address, downloads the kernel, and successfully root mounts the /usr/local/nfsroot/etch directory. The problem is I can't get a console login. Here are the last few lines of the boot process: INIT: Entering runlevel: 2 Starting system log daemon: syslogd. Starting kernel log daemon: klogd. * Not starting internet superserver: no services enabled. Starting periodic command scheduler: crond. TSC appears to be running slowly. Marking it as unstable Time: scx200_hrt clocksource has been installed. INIT: Id "T0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "T0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes The entire boot process can be seen here: http://www.davidcourtney.org/tempstuff/net4801_boot.txt I did a google search for "INIT: Id "T0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" but I didn't find any useful information. I found a lot of explanations as to what causes the error, but no solutions. The getty program tries to open a console on ttyS0 and immediately fails. Since it's set to respawn in the /etc/inittab, it immediately tries again ... but immediately fails. After X number of tries, it gives up for 5 minutes. Here is the relevant section of my /etc/inittab # Example how to put a getty on a serial line (for a terminal) # T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100 I have "Console on 8250/16550 and compatible serial port." enabled in my kernel. My boot parameters are as follows: SERIAL 0 9600 default linux label linux kernel kernel.bz2 append root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.1.10:/usr/local/nfsroot/etch ip=dhcp console=ttyS0,9600 prompt 0 timeout 0 Everything seems to be working otherwise. Debian seems to be up and running just fine on the net4801 ... I just can't login due to not having a console. And ssh isn't installed when you run debootstrap ... so I can't ssh into the machine either. So the question is ... why is getty failing to bring up a console on ttyS0? I'm completely stumped by this. Like I said before, I have followed this procedure dozens of times in the past. I have fully documented the process and it has always worked before. I have spent at least 4 or 5 hours trying to figure this out so far. And I will continue investing the problem. But I wanted to post this question to the list to see if anyone could offer help. Thanks. _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
