Re: Current hangs at boot

[Jochen Kunz <jkunz%unixag-kl.fh-kl.de@localhost>]

On Thu, 15 May 2008 15:12:25 -0700 (MST)
Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost> wrote:

> > I can throw an other gig of bytes into the machine at the colo if
> > you wane debug this.
> Yes, definately.  My test machine (the 270) has 2GB of ram, and works
> fine. It's very odd that the 170 would have issues.
I upgraded my machine from a 330MHz / 1 MB L2 cache CPU to a 400 MHz /
4 MB L2 cache CPU. Now it boots with 2 GB RAM. Odd.

> More than 2GB might be a bigger issue though, I've never tested
> that, but I would assume there might be some problems.
The -170 maxes out at 2 GB. So I can't help. If the -270 uses the same
memory modules I may be able to ship some 256 MB or 512 MB DIMMs to
you. I have a dual CPU (FRU seems to be F98H9845904) and memory
(F98H2641917) card that may fit a -270...

> I assume it would be possible to make a machine with 3 or maybe even
> 4 GB of ram work.  It might take some fiddlery though.  Any more than
> that is not possible for 32bit ppc. (as far as I know at least, maybe
> it is for certain procs, but its unlikely that the 64 bit procs have
> largemem instructions at all, whereas some of the 75xx series procs
> do.
Well. If we really need / want more then 4 GB a 64 bit kernel would be
the (hard) way to go.

> > An other strange thing: ofwboot hung when it tried to
> > load /netbsd64. (There was only /netbsd.) When I made a link from
> > netbsd to netbsd.ofppc64 it worked.
> That is rather odd.  I usually use the different names to keep my
> test images separate, or to put one in with a higher boot priority
> than another one as a test, so it's fairly well exercized.
It worked for me quite well too. But it stoped working at one point.
Strange quantum flux?

> > And I messed up the firmware of my -150.
[...]
> Did you upgrade it?
No. I just booted / rebooted it, mounted a disk to do a local install,
mounted an other disk as the first was dead, power on, power off, add
more RAM, ... The usual stuff to set up hardware.

Hmmmm. Maybe it needs to be kreidlered...
[kreidlering the machine]
OK. Now it works again.
Sorry for the false alarm.

An other issue: I can't "boot disk" on the -170. I checked the device
alias, it is OK. I tried "boot /pci@fef00000/scsi@c/sd@4" and got the
same: OFW silently returned to the OK prompt. I can't setup the disk as
first boot device in "Select Boot Devices". I have to manualy walk
through the "Select Software" menu where I can choose and boot netbsd.

I instaled using sysinst on the -150 and I can't boot the machine at
all from disk. It tells me "No Operating System Instaled". I can "boot
-a net" from OFW and then I can change the root device to sd0. This is
the MBR partition table. It looks almost identical to the one from the
-170:

Disk: /dev/rsd0c NetBSD disklabel disk geometry: cylinders:
11474, heads: 5, sectors/track: 312 (1560 sectors/cylinder) total
sectors: 17916240

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1024, heads: 255, sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 17916240

Partition table:
0: reserved (sysid 33)
    start 63, size 20480 (10 MB, Cyls 0-1/71/5)
1: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 22621, size 17893619 (8737 MB, Cyls 1/104/5-1115/59/48),
Active PBR is not bootable: Bad magic number (0x0000)
2: Linux/MINIX (sharing disk with DRDOS) or Personal RISC boot (sysid
65) start 20543, size 30 (0 MB, Cyls 1/71/6-1/71/35)
        PBR is not bootable: Bad magic number (0x2046)
3: Linux/MINIX (sharing disk with DRDOS) or Personal RISC boot (sysid
65) start 20573, size 2048 (1 MB, Cyls 1/71/36-1/104/4)
        PBR is not bootable: Bad magic number (0xe0ff)
First active partition: 1

And why is there no "probe-scsi-all" and friends? Sun OFW seems to be
just a bit more user friendly...

> A quick list of things that these machines still need, in no
> particular order:
> 
> Envsys support for the rtas-based environmental sensors. (easy)
> Fix support for pci1 on the 170/270 (easy/medium)
> Audio support (no idea, audio is magic to me)
> Floppy support (easy probably)
> ofctl working (medium)
Maybe I can contribute a few lines of code. But I will be short on time
during the next weeks.
-- 


tsch__,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/