newbie and G5 + gentoo

[pindar]

I'm fairly new to linux, though I do a lot of work on the command line in Mac OS X and have a yellowdog installation on an older box. I was impatient to get linux on my G5, so I tried to install gentoo. It's a vanilla 1.8 G5 with a second drive installed.

My installation seems to have been successful; when I boot with the "alt"-key down, the linux partition is recognized, but when I try to boot off of it, yaboot complains that "hd:4,/vmlinux" cannot be found (my root partition is /dev/sda4). I then tried different options (like "hd:4/boot/vmlinux"), but to no avail.

For those of you patient enough to listen to a newbie's story: I had to make several attempts to get that far. The first one ended in utter failure when I found out that there was apparently no way to tell of that I wanted to boot out of /dev/sdb. So I repartitioned everything... I then read the G5-guide at http://www.os3.nl/~visser2d/g5install.html, but the iso-image that was referred to (at http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/experimental/ppc/livecd/g5/) wouldn't boot my G5; it complained about something with my second drive and stalled, so I had to poweroff the hard way...

I started from the regular ppc-cd and downloaded everything to compile the kernel (2.6.4); I had to disable some support for Mac serial drivers, otherwise make would give errors. Compiling then worked, and I proceeded according to the handbooks. One piece of information was incredibly important, but I found it a bit too late (could this please be incorporated into the G5-addendum?): "modprobe therm_pm72" is the magic word! Yesterday, I sat all day next to my G5 that sounded like a 747 at take-off...

So I imagine that the error must be in my yaboot.conf file. I tried to follow as closely as possible the settings given in the G5-manual:
device=hd:
And i ran the "mkofboot -v -b /dev/sda4 -o hd:4" command, which didn't give any errors. Any ideas what I could try to make my box boot from linux?

[pindar]

Oh, I should add one more problem I ran into: I was never able to cleanly umount my /mnt/gentoo partition; umount always claimed "device busy." This in turn made a proper reboot impossible because the filesystems couldn't be unmounted. So again I had to poweroff by using the power key.

[SeJo]

did you do "unmount /mnt/gentoo/proc" first?
cheers
_________________
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers."

[pindar]

yes, and umount /gentoo/boot too.

Thanks for your reply!

[aarestad]

[pindar]

No, both links work. However, if you just click on them, your browser will add the trailing comma and parenthesis, which makes them invalid, of course. Must be a misconfiguration of the forum software, I guess.

[pindar]

Well, I guess I'm just not experienced enough with linux and will have to give up on gentoo. I started over from scratch: dlded a new iso (the 2004.1 that just became available). Configuring and building the kernel went fine. unmounting the file systems did not work (umount /mnt/gentoo/boot gave "not mounted"; /mnt/gento/proc unmounted cleanly, unmounting /mnt/gentoo gave "device busy"). Hence, the reboot command stalled. After a forced reboot with Alt, the open firmware shows me the linux partition as bootable with the tux sign, but when I try to boot off of it, I'm dumped back into the of bootchooser.

[pindar]

OK, no solution, but maybe I can pin down the problem a bit more accurately. The G5 manual said: "Unfortunately the current version of the Serial ATA driver contains a bug and in its default configuration will not compile. To fix this go to the directory: "/usr/src/ppc-development-sources-<version>/drivers/scsi" and locate a file called "sata_svw.c" open it ("nano -w sata_svw.c") and edit the following. In line 226 replace this line by the following line: "#ifdef CONFIG_ALL_PPC". Save the file and exit the texteditor." The first part is correct: the sata_svw module won't compile, that's why I get this when I boot from cd:

[korg]

Yes, the patch suggestion gives no context for what you're ment to do now that the file has changed. *sigh*.

[pindar]

OK, the plot is thickening, I think I am inching towards having a working gentoo installation (or so I hope). Here's my progress so far:

1) After I had tried with a 2.4-kernel (which wouldn't compile), I had another look at that sata_svw.c file. It's line 233 (not 226) that needs changing. The old line runs
#ifdef CONFIG_PPC_OF
(within a block "static Scsi_Host_Template k2_sata_sht{").
I replaced this with the reommended
#ifdef CONFIG_ALL_PPC
and the kernel compiled fine.

2) Unmounting still does not work properly. I gave every umount-call twice because I had read somewhere about a problem with systems being mounted twice. I also tried "umount /mnt/gentoo/dev," which seems to be missing in the handbook. Rebooting still stalled at the "unmounting local filesystems" line; I had to power off the computer. At least, when I reboot into OS X, I can now see my linux root partition with ExtFSManager; it can be mounted, and I have access to the files.

3) Next, configuring yaboot. This is a stage where I'm still failing. After reboot, yaboot comes up, then says something about hd:4,/vmlinux no such file or device. I tried adding a symlink 'vmlinux' to /boot/vmlinux on the root partition. When I enter booting information manually like so

[pindar]

Sorry if I'm a PITA, but I don't want to give up (yet), and I feel I'm making progress.

The yaboot issue has disappeared; it now loads the kernel symlinked on /dev/sda4

I recompiled the kernel twice: first time round, I managed to remove all references to Serial 8250 drivers from the config file. At restart, it stalled with the "vfs: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block" error. I searched the forum and found that I need to enable CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y in my .config. While running make, there was an interactive dialog about different types of scsi devices, I chose the "Apple 2k" one. At reboot, I was getting all excited since many many lines of text just whirled by. It was too fast to read, but I think the last couple of lines were about USB support (there was something about USB Hub detected). Then the computer just rebooted. So again, something in the kernel isn't playing nice with my hardware, I suspect.

Does anybody have a .config file known to work on a G5 that they'd be willing to send me? I could then analyse the differences with my .config and try and recompile.

Thanks!

[jaspal kallar]

I had this issue of reboots. I think I had to enable

[pindar]

Mmh, I have these set in my .config, so this can't be it. I'm compiling ppc-development-sources-2.6.1-r1 (the one from the 2004.1 livecd). Do you think it is worth to try the newer build 2.6.5, or should I go on tweaking 2.6.1?

It'd be great if you could send your config to thomas dot schmitz at uni-bonn.de. Thanks!

[jaspal kallar]

I'm surprised that the 2004.1 cd has only the ppc-development-sources-2.6.1-r1 and not say at least ppc-development-sources-2.6.3_rc3-r1
(which was on the 2004.0 cd) but I'm no expert really.

If you have enough linux experience yes I would try the
ppc-development-sources-2.6.5 series and perhaps use the config I have sent to
you.

I think you'll have to emerge the ppc-development-sources-2.6.5 and then alter the symlink in /usr/src so that
linux points to the ppc-development-sources-2.6.5
i.e

[pindar]

Not yet...

Jaspal, thanks so much for your help. I emerged the 2.6.5 kernel (and learned a tremendous lot about portage in the process), recompiled, but so far, have had the same effect: a lot of the boot process seems to be advancing very well, and then I can just see the line "restarting the system," and the computer reboots. One problem might be that yours is a dual pcu while mine isn't. Is there any way to save the output of the boot screen to a file? unfortunately, the G5 is so fast that it's impossible to read the stuff on screen. Or is there anything like an interactive boot process that will ask for reconfirmation for every step it does? I assume the output is not logged because the system never comes up. But there must be a way since my computer starts from the livecd, it's "only" a matter of the right configuration.

Well, I'll be back on this tomorrow.

[jaspal kallar]

Note the config I sent to you has
CONFIG_NR_CPUS=2 and I think should change it to 1 although I can't see this being the problem for the reboot.


I'm afraid I would also like to know how to log the boot process when it fails.

I would perhaps check your /etc/fstab to see that things are okay there like if you have a line for /proc for example. Also how have you partioned your disk (perhaps do an mac-fdisk -l) ? Post also your yaboot.conf since it (hopefully it is a just a simple mistake there).

Also when you unmount make sure you not in that directory you want to umount eg to umount /mnt/gentoo then I believe you must not be in this directory, anywhere else (say in /usr) would be fine. Still I don't believe that this would cause the problem. I also wonder if you have compiled in ext3/resierfs (just a thought).

I must admit I personally don't know why you have do any "symlink 'vmlinux' to /boot/vmlinux". I think you in /usr/src/linux. You have the .config file there and you perhaps used make menuconfig to choose the kernel options and saved the file and compliled the kernel. Then this should result in a vmlinux and a System.map file. I would copy these to /boot and make sure you have the yahoo.conf correct.

[pindar]

Holy cow, it works! I just took your config file and said what the heck with multi-cpu, I'll give it a try. I compiled yet another kernel -- and sure enough, it booted! Now my G5 is sitting next to me, installing kde from the CD, and I'm a happy camper again!

Jaspal, thanks so much, without your config file, I wouldn't have gotten there. Somewhere deep in my own configuration, there must have been a conflict or a module too many or too few... Well, maybei I'm going try and find out during the next weeks, but I'll sure as heck keep this kernel that actually works.

So my tale might actually be an encouragement to other n00bies -- don't give up, it'll work (eventually, hopefully...).

Best

Thomas

[jaspal kallar]

Great! I was wondering which kernel you managed to get it working on ? The 2.6.1 or the 2.6.5 ?

I suppose you can do a diff on the old config and the one that works to get an idea of what you set and what you did not.

You are right gentoo eventually works. You just need to keep at it. Perhaps thats part of the learning involved with this distro. I bet you have learned alot already!

Anyway, good luck with the rest of install.

[pindar]

It's the 2.6.5 kernel; the 2.6.1 didn't want to compile with your config (probably a couple advanced options make didn't recognize). Thanks so much!

And on to configuring X...

[simon_b]

[jaspal kallar]

Sure Simon I can send my current 2.6.5 config. What's your email address ?

[simon_b]

[ronc]

Did you every finish that step-by-step guide? I have a new 1.8 GHz Dual box, and I'm trying to install Gentoo on a *second* hard disk.

[simon_b]