Re: Current hangs at boot

[Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>]

On 16-May-2008 Jochen Kunz wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 2008 15:12:25 -0700 (MST)
> Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost> wrote:
> 
> 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.

Aigh.  As far as I know 333/2GB is a supported configuration (physically, by
IBM that is).  Can you please make a machine with that setup remotely
accessible to me?  Or maybe try AIX on it just to be sure it works there first.

> 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...

My memory card is mostly empty.  I have a single card in mine, and no card for
the secondary memory slot.  As far as the CPU you mentioned, I dunno what kind
that is.  Right now I have mine set with a 4x375-8MB L2 card, so it's unlikely
you have a better card.  In theory I could use the dimms and the second memory
card, but I dunno if shipping that would be overly costly to you.

>> > 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...

I have no idea what that word means, but glad you got it working. :)

> 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.

Right.. to boot disk you need to pick the right partition.  OFW numbers them
from 1.  So to boot an RS/6000 you need to type boot disk:3 or boot disk:4.

> 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:

Very odd.  That should work, It's supposed to cope with the multiboot stuff
just fine.  Maybe something is odd about the multiboot support on your machine.

I'll explain how it's supposed to work:
 
> Disk: /dev/rsd0c NetBSD disklabel disk geometry: cylinders:
> Partition table:
> 0: reserved (sysid 33)
>     start 63, size 20480 (10 MB, Cyls 0-1/71/5)

This is the MSDOS partition that contains ofwboot.  This is used by the
Pegasos, which doesn't care what the partition type is.  It's set to 33, as
thats an invalid partition type to the IBM machines, and they will not attempt
to read it. If it gets set to an MSDOS type, the IBM machine will read it and
hang.  (It's possible your machine doesn't like this partition.. Maybe delete
or change the type?)

> 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)

The NetBSD part.  In theory, it also shouldn't care about this.

> 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)

A PReP partition that contains the chrp multiboot text file dd'd into it.

> 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

Another PReP partition that contains ofwboot dd'd in.

Both 2 and 3 are bootable from the IBM firmware.   In theory, the multiboot
setup should find 2, read it and know to boot from 3.

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

Yeah..  it is.  There is no help, and very little to assist you in any way.  It
was never designed to be used by humans.  In theory all you ever need to run
AIX is SMS.

Perhaps you could help me debug the multiboot support a bit.  Maybe try
disabling partitions 0 and 1, or changing the numbers on them, or whatever, to
try and get the machine to recognize the bootable partition.  It would be nice
to know what your machines expect to see.

It's also possible it doesn't like something about the format of the chrp
bootinfo.txt file.

---
Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/