[alpha - srm] st3 - aboot boot failure [was: QLogic modules]

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

hello all,

Last week I was able to acquire an Digital Server 3000 (AS800 whitebox) which was running NT4.
As I have another machine (i386) running gentoo I decided to try and see if I could get gentoo on the Alpha.

I've never worked with an Alpha before, but after reading some documentation on SRM / AlphaBIOS and general Alpha related stuff, I felt confident enough to try it.

Besides an annoying problem with the onboard scsi controller (qlogic isp1040b - kernel panics), I've come to the point where one needs to install the bootloader; which I want to do.

The (helpfull) handbook for alpha's says:

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

ok, I found this site 'Woo-hoo! (or "Successful Miata Installation Notes")' and it seems the guy has a solution to the problem I posted above.

Let's see if it works.

[edit]
aboot does emerge now, and I can install fine. Might be a point for the alpha handbook?

Now to boot: anyone know a way to make SRM boot from a PCI SCSI card? Nothing shows up under 'show device'.

[edit2]
In case the site ever goes down, here's what helped:

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

ok,

I'm still trying to find a solution for this AS.

SRM can't boot from the PCI Adaptec card, and the onboard QLogic is a disaster in terms of kernel panics.

This post 'https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=895692#895692' mentions a module from the Feral company website. They seem to have closed down, so I'm wondering if anyone else has this module?

Using the adaptec controller the machine was as stable as it should be, so together with all the posts I read about the QLogic cards, I'm betting the module can do some good.

Kloeri · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 144

Try using the qla1280 driver (enable 10x0 support) with a vanilla 2.6.10 kernel. This seems to be rock stable on my alphaserver 800/500 aka 3005.

Hope this helps.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

tnx, I'll try that.

Don't have access to the machine right now, so I ran menuconfig on an i386 machine; found the qla1280, but how exactly do i enable 10x0 support? The driver option doesn't enable any extra 'suboptions', or do you mean 'Qlogic ISP SCSI support'?

[edit]

Hm, this seems nice; 'Built 2.6.8 kernel without ext3 bug and working qlogic driver'. I'll try this sometime to see if it works for me. Was this what you suggested?

[edit2]

nevermind, the i386 wasn't using a recent 2.6 kernel.

Kloeri · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 144

2.6.8 might not support 10x0 - I'm currently using the qla1280 drivers 10x0 support on 2.6.10 and haven't had any problems at all.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

Kloeri · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 144

2005.0 will use a 2.6.10 kernel with the QLA10x0 driver - that should finally fix the ISP1020 lockups of the livecd. If you can't wait for 2005.0 to be released (I hope it will be released soon now) you can use any other boot cd and just follow the Gentoo handbook after getting a prompt. I've used the Debian install cd once or twice myself.

Good luck.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

ya,

after submitting my last post, I thought of that too :). Thanks for the tip. Any info on when 2005.0 is coming out?

Kloeri · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 144

No, 2005.0 will be released when it's ready

dbackeberg · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Boston

>Now to boot: anyone know a way to make SRM boot from a PCI SCSI card? Nothing shows up under 'show device'.

The card doesn't show up with a show dev? Ideally, you should see the scsi disk at least, and do a set bootdev thatnamefromshowdev.

How is the cdrom attached to the system? Is it scsi, and on the same scsi controller card, or is it attached directly to the motherboard?

What DO you get with a show dev?

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

dbackeberg · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Boston

Yep.

Do a

>>> show b*

and this will dump all your boot settings. If you haven't noticed already, SRM behaves like old Unixes (VMS, for example) that let you abbreviate the command name, as long as it's unambiguous.

For instance, you can type
>>> b
to boot.

It's boot_dev that sets which device to boot from. You should see the scsi devices attached to your pci card (you may need to do a
>>> show dev | less
and you can set your boot device to be the other scsi disk instead.

You'll also need to know the partition table and where the kernel is, to be able to set the other boot settings. This is where a live disk comes in handy. If you haven't already setup aboot or some other boot loader on the boot disk you'll need to do that too.

Or, if you want to practice with the arguments before you make changes to your settings, you can specify everything on the boot line.

for instance:
boot dka0 -fi 3/boot/vmlinuz -fl root=/dev/sda3

hopefully that's obvious. device name according to SRM, where to find the kernel (the first number is the partition), and you always have to pass where to find root as an argument to the kernel. You can also pass all your other kernel arguments using -fl. Once you have things the way you want. Use
set boot_osflags root=/dev/sda3
etc., but use the correct values for your setup.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

dbackeberg · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Boston

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

dbackeberg · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Boston

I agree that your boot parameters look right. I only have three ideas now:

1) Did you setup your kernel with initrd built into the kernel, or did you build a separate initrd? If it's separate, you'll need to pass that as a boot parameter.

2) there's something wacky with the kernel, that somehow passes the initial aboot check, but doesn't boot properly. I wouldn't know what that would be. I'm surprised there's NO kernel output whatsoever, but it leads me to think you should at least try copying the /usr/src/linux/arch/alpha/boot/aboot (or whatever that file is called ) to /boot, change your aboot or boot arguments a little bit, and see if another kernel image does the same exact stuff.

3) this is admittedly a bad idea, but here goes:
alphas need to see a keyboard and a video card before they'll boot graphically. If they're missing either of these items, they'll boot to serial output instead. (But in my memory, this means complete boot, as in from when you first push the power switch to when the system is sitting at a login prompt.) Perhaps you didn't build keyboard support into your kernel? If you see your hard drive going crazy, like the system is booting, you might suspect this. If you've already built ssh you could try ssh-ing into the system, or pinging it if you've provided proper network device support. This is a long shot.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

dbackeberg · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Boston

Good idea on trying the kernel from the livecd.

To check the way your initrd is getting made....

cd /usr/src/linux (assuming that's a symlink to your kernel source tree)
make menuconfig
check out
Device Drivers -> Block Devices -> Initial RAM Disk (initrd) support
* means it's compiled into your kernel

This option won't show up unless you're also including "RAM Disk support", which is in the same section.

I agree that if you're putting your scsi controller support in your kernel, this shouldn't matter (I don't have a 100% clear understanding here, so I don't know whether to recommend "trying it anyway"). Is there anything else you might be leaving out, filesystem, scsi system support, wrong scsi controller driver, wrong cpu? I was really hoping you'd have more info on your screen, like maybe it would boot to the point where it tries to mount root and fail.

Kloeri · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 144

I don't see why initrd should be needed for booting. The only times I use initrd is when building the livecd kernels or if I'm using software raid or similar for /. Usually initrds only complicate matters further and I recommend not using it at all unless you have a very good reason why you need it.

Make sure you have built-in support (no module stuff) for your controllers, filesystem(s) and that /etc/fstab and your boot configuration is correct. If you somehow screw up the root=dev/??? argument in /etc/aboot.conf you wont be able to mount /.

Hope this helps,
Bryan

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

dboitnot · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:21 pm Post subject: Same problem

I've got a similar setup on a Compaq AlphaServer DS10. Aboot freezes after "loading kernel..."

Has there been a resolution to this problem? I'd like to avoid using the kernel from the live cd. At least, I'd like to avoid using it permantently.

varname · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

nope, no solution yet. I haven't really had the time past week to work on it though.

I haven't tried the kernel from the new 2005.0 livecd; is it any good?

dboitnot · Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:15 pm Post subject: 2005.0 LiveCD

It boots the CD but only under 2.4. The 2.6 kernel on the CD hangs and turns the screen background red. I'm new to the Alpha so I'm not sure what it means but if you pay attention while booting the 2.4 kernel on the CD you'll see it flashes red right before going black for a normal Linux boot.

Realizing I could only boot the 2.4 kernel from the CD I tried compiling a 2.4 kernel but it also hangs at the "Starting kernel..." message. The next thing I'll try will be to copy the 2.4 kernel, initrd, and modules from the LiveCD to see if I can get them to boot from the HD. I'm not sure what this will tell me but at least I'll have a bootable machine.

ThenAgain · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2004 Posts: 5

I managed to get the thing to boot by copying the 2.4 kernel, modules, and initrd to the hard drive and directing aboot to boot from these. I also had to emerge devfsd to work with 2.4. This is no kind of solution but the machine IS running under it's own steam now.