I have a net5501 with 16Gb SanDisk PCMCIA storage. I have a working PXE setup which is used to install the OS, the net5501 came with comBIOS 1.33 installed.
net5501 0512 Mbyte Memory CPU Geode LX 500 Mhz Pri Mas SanDisk SDCFH-016G LBA Xlt 1024--63 15638 Mbyte So have tried to install CentOS 5.4 and am able to use its VNCserver mode to answer all the questions but at the very end when it goes to resolve the packages selected I get python errors. I suspect this is due to i686 issue, even though the distribution calls itself i386 and the kernel it uses for install appears to have no problems running. So I then tried Debian 5.0.3 i386, this seemed to install fine but upon reboot I get GRUB console. I have implemented the extra things noted in http://wiki.soekris.info/Installing_Debian_Linux_5.0 relating to initrd. However I am unable to get it booting past GRUB to make use of this fix. My evaluation of the problem is that GRUB is having some issues and isn't providing a useful error about it. When I was running a shell inside Debian 5 installer I did the following to ensure the files were in the root directory of the rootfs: cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /menu.lst cp /initrd.gz /initrd.gz.0 cp /vmlinuz /vmlinuz.0 sh-3.2# ls -lad /initrd.img* /vmlinuz* /menu.lst lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Mar 8 04:35 /initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-2.6.2 6-2-486 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6178780 Mar 8 05:58 /initrd.img.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4120 Mar 8 05:58 /menu.lst lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Mar 8 04:35 /vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-48 6 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1469200 Mar 8 05:58 /vmlinuz.0 sh-3.2# ls -l /boot total 14548 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 912841 Feb 10 12:25 System.map-2.6.26-2-486 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 92019 Feb 10 12:25 config-2.6.26-2-486 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 8 05:57 grub -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6178780 Mar 8 05:37 initrd.img-2.6.26-2-486 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6194106 Mar 8 04:40 initrd.img-2.6.26-2-486.bak -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1469200 Feb 10 12:24 vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486 sh-3.2# sh-3.2# ls -l /boot/grub total 224 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 197 Mar 8 05:57 default -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15 Mar 8 04:44 device.map -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8704 Mar 8 05:57 e2fs_stage1_5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8544 Mar 8 05:57 fat_stage1_5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9568 Mar 8 05:57 jfs_stage1_5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4120 Mar 8 04:44 menu.lst -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3965 Mar 8 04:44 menu.lst~ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7904 Mar 8 05:57 minix_stage1_5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10720 Mar 8 05:57 reiserfs_stage1_5 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Mar 8 05:57 stage1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 128552 Mar 8 05:57 stage2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10280 Mar 8 05:57 xfs_stage1_5 sh-3.2# file /boot/* /boot/System.map-2.6.26-2-486: ASCII text /boot/config-2.6.26-2-486: ASCII English text /boot/grub: directory /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-486: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modifie d: Mon Mar 8 05:37:20 2010 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-486.bak: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modifie d: Mon Mar 8 04:40:08 2010 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486: Linux kernel x86 boot executable RO-rootFS, root_dev 0x6803, swap_dev 0x1, Normal VGA sh-3.2# file /vmlinuz.0 /vmlinuz.0: Linux kernel x86 boot executable RO-rootFS, root_dev 0x6803, swap_dev 0x1, Normal VGA So all the useful files were in the root directory since when I tried to manually use "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486" I get file not found error from GRUB as shown below. The partition layout is basically one huge rootfs all but around 768Mb of swap. Desktop computers normally partition a /boot at the start of the storage so that BIOS limits are not reached in older BIOSes, but I presume since the BIOS is recent/newly released this issue doesn't exist for the size of storage I have. Question 1) Is there a BIOS limitation relating to the maximum addressable block that GRUB can access for boot loading purposes ? Wasn't this limitation lifted in modern PC BIOS by use of a defacto change/extension to the BIOS disk access routines ? Does comBIOS support this ? This is a session when trying to manually use the GRUB command prompt during a bootup: grub> root (hd0,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 grub> configfile /menu.lst [This causes the screen to clear and then the version info and shell prompt to appear, this is the same as what happens when I try to bootup normally ] GNU GRUB version 0.97 (639K lower / 523264K upper memory) [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ] grub> kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486 Error 2: Bad file or directory type grub> kernel /vmlinuz.0 Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format grub> So now I reboot using Debian installed and let it run all the way until it starts to ask about partition layouts, then I select <Go Back> and then <Execute Shell> I then run: # mount /dev/hda1 /mnt # mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc # mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev # chroot /mnt sh-3.2# fdisk -l Disk /dev/hda: 16.0 GB, 16013942784 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1946 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000760fd Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 1859 14932386 83 Linux /dev/hda2 1860 1946 698827+ 5 Extended /dev/hda5 1860 1946 698796 82 Linux swap / Solaris # [I create a file /tmp/aa with these contents ] sh-3.2# cat /tmp/aa root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) sh-3.2# /usr/sbin/grub < /tmp/aa > /tmp/out.log Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time. # cat /tmp/out.log GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory) [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ] grub> root (hd0,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 grub> setup (hd0) Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 17 sectors are embedded. succeeded Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+17 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded Done. grub> This does not fix the problem but looks a nominal GRUB install to me. I have also tried installing with /boot in the first 128Mb of the Flash disk this has made no difference. TIA, Darryl _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
