[Soekris] Cfcard boot problems

Fri Nov 17 11:35:54 UTC 2006

On Fri, 2006-11-17 at 08:22 +0100, Attilla De Groot wrote:
> Hi Bill,
> 
> 
> Thanks for the help.
> Last night I was trying again to solve it and I did.
> 
> I can't explain it, I just recompiled lilo in de the chroot, copied  
> the install to the cf disk and run lilo again. This worked, with the  
> same configuration.

And suddenly I rembered why I got those 00's: I was running the lilo
binary with the chroot option from an installation script, and the
chrooted environment contained files (notably the map file, I guess)
from a different Lilo version. Problem solved (?).

> 
> Greetings,
> Attilla
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 17, 2006, at 8:08 AM, Bill Maas wrote:
> 
> > 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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> >>
> >
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> 
> 