[Soekris] Cfcard boot problems

[Bill Maas]

Hello Atilla,

I was being very (overly) cautious yesterday, because I would
have known, to an extent at least, what I was talking about
had it aplied to an OpenBSD install, but I'm less familiar with
Linux disk initialization details. However, on hindsight, I'm
quite convinced that the different understanding of the C/H/S
layout on the CF card by the 2 BIOSes involved is the problem
here. Your best shot at a successful boot would be to boot
from the net using an nfs root and leave the C/H/S translation
to the Soekris BIOS. Second best would be to boot the Soekris,
find out what the Soekris BIOS thinks of the disk geometry, and
pass these CHS values to fdisk on the machine with the CF card
writer attached. Much less trouble, and definitely worth a try,
I think.

Bill

On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 14:52 +0100, Bill Maas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> from /usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt.gz (on Ubuntu):
> 
> "
>  0x00   "Internal error". This code is generated by the sector
> read routine of the LILO boot loader whenever an internal
> inconsistency is detected. This might be caused by corrupt
> files. Try re-building the map file. Another possible cause for
> this error are attempts to access cylinders beyond 1024 while
> using the LINEAR option. See section "BIOS restrictions" for more
> details and for how to solve the problem.
> "
> 
> I've had the same screenful of 00's in the past, but I can't
> recall how I solved the problem. Maybe try booting from the
> net using an NFS partition as /, and then configure the card.
> You will then be accessing the CF diractly through the Soekris'
> BIOS, which might eliminate potential trouble, e.g. with how
> the BIOS sees the disk. Perhaps Lilo can't find the kernel
> due to different C/H/S translation. I'm not sure about whether
> that could be the problem, but I can't find a specific "can't
> find the kernel image" error code, so Lilo might use 0x00 for
> that too.
> 
> Bill
> 
> On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 12:18 +0100, Attilla De Groot wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > 
> > I recently bought a Soekris 4801 (266Mhz, 256mb). Very nice hardware.  
> > I have tried to boot it with a cfcard for the past week, but I'm not  
> > able to get it booting.
> > 
> > I'm using gentoo as linux distribution and I did a install as I have  
> > did alot of times. I have a flash card reader that I have connected  
> > to my server where I'm doing the gentoo install (/dev/sdb). I  
> > partitioned the cfcard, just one ext2 partition and I went in to the  
> > chroot of my install and run lilo.
> > 
> > Basic setup right ? :)
> > 
> > Well I tried to boot this cfcard, but I only got a screen full of 00  
> > 00 00 00. So I check my configuration over and over and I can't find  
> > any mistakes as far as I can see. So I tried Grub as a bootloader,  
> > but when I tried to boot this I got the message "harddisk error".  
> > This morning I bought a new cf card in case the old one is somehow  
> > broken, but this didn't solve the problem.
> > 
> > Here are my configs:
> > 
> > stofzuiger flash # cat etc/lilo.conf
> > lba32
> > 
> > # MBR to install LILO to:
> > boot = /dev/sdb1
> > disk = /dev/sdb
> >       bios = 0x80
> > map = /boot/.map
> > #install = /boot/boot-text.b
> > 
> > prompt
> > timeout=30
> > 
> > vga = normal
> > 
> > image = /boot/kernel-2.6.18-r2
> >          root = /dev/hda1
> >          label = Soekris
> >          append = "console=ttyS0,9600n81 root=/dev/hda1"
> > #        read-only       # Mount read-only
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > stofzuiger flash # cat boot/grub/grub.conf
> > #
> > # Sample boot menu configuration file
> > #
> > 
> > # Boot automatically after 30 secs.
> > timeout 30
> > 
> > # By default, boot the first entry.
> > default 0
> > 
> > # For booting GNU/Linux
> > title  GNU/Linux
> > kernel /kernel-2.6.18-r2 root=/dev/hda1
> > 
> > # title Install GRUB into the hard disk
> > root    (hd0,0)
> > setup   (hd3)
> > 
> > 
> > Can anyone tell me what I did wrong of how I can sole the problem ?
> > 
> > 
> > Greetings,
> > Attilla
> > _______________________________________________
> > Soekris-tech mailing list
> > Soekris-tech at lists.soekris.com
> > http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
> > 
> 
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