[solved] Trouble to boot a newly install PPC G4...

[lma1980]

First of all : this is my second attempt to get Gentoo Linux (stable) to run on a PPC based machine as a Gateway (firewall+router+dhcp+ntp).

First was a Performa6400 with a buggy OF that nail me to re-install System7 with BootX... Never had any issues but was using the ~ppc tree.

Now ; I have manage to install a clean stage-3 ppc32 and done few configuration. Yaboot did work on this machine and I have a running Kernel (2.6.34-gentoo-r1) but still I can't pass the checkfs step during the boot initialization. fsck.ext3 can't find or open directory for /dev/hda3 (my ROOT).

I have seen lot of x86 users post aging from 2004 pointing at various direction : the best direction is lurking around my baselayout-1.12.13 (in 2004 it was due to baselayout update between 1.10.x and 1.11.x). fsck.ext3:no such file/superblock corrupt on boot...!!

I would like to know if this a know issue? If yes, what should be added to the handbook so that new user can easily finish an installation from scratch? I may help to wrote this if needed. If this is solved by installing baselayout-2 may it should be investigated to sort the real bug out of this and solve for good baselayout-1. As the current stage-3 is still using baselayout-1 as version 2 is still having un-stabilized dependencies.

I may sound a bit displaced but I had lot of time using Gentoo between 2005 and 2008 ; it as been two years I haven't played much with Linux and so even less worked on Gentoo. I want to help out with this issue. I even have another PPC G4 to test bed when I have manage to finalized this new project.

Note : there is only Gentoo Linux running on that station (nor MacOS Classic, nor Mac OS X are installed).
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"... before that, there was amoebas..."

[lma1980]

Question : I just realized that my nvram battery is dead. Does it influence the checkfs process?
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"... before that, there was amoebas..."

[JoseJX]

It can, because the time isn't set right at boot, so the superblock time may be wrong, causing the disk to be checked. Can you fsck the disk from the installcd?
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Gentoo PPC FAQ: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml

[lma1980]

I can't tell right now if this was really due to my dead 1/2AA battery but I did also found out that I had Kernel configuration conflict.

The error is not in the baselayout-1 like I first suspected ; I ran emerge -e baselayout to clarify the issue. I would had expected new configuration file to process if something vital was changed to show up with etc-update ; no file to modify. This told me that I had a CODE18 going on here so I RTFM again and again ; answer came out by digging closed bugs in gentoo bugzilla about

[lma1980]

Last working configuration of the Kernel for a Apple PowerMac3,1 (AGP G4) with 2 NIC 3c905.

As I'm not planning to implement an alarm yet for this Gateway I have took out the audio part. I know I haven't finish optimizing this kernel .config (annexed) ; currently using my second try and no issue seen so far.

Question : I have red that ofpath is broken with libsata. What may I do to help out to fix this utility? As I reported before I'm also having issue with this utility. Sure I could alias ybin with the good ofpath (found using the livecd) so that I don't regretfully forget about it.

May it help someone in the future.

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revision #2

[JoseJX]

The problem with ofpath isn't that the code is wrong (i.e. the livecd uses the same version as you have installed). The problem is with how it detects the ofpath for the new scsi-pata devices.

I've rewritten ofpath to work with these new drivers, please test it out here:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~josejx/new-ofpath

Thanks!
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Gentoo PPC FAQ: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml

[lma1980]

[JoseJX]

Thanks! Please report in the sticky at the top of the forum!
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Gentoo PPC FAQ: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml