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piwwo
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:49 am    Post subject: Installing Gentoo on a Soekris net6501-50 Reply with quote

Hello

I am just trying to run Gentoo on a Soekris. Since I didn't find a howto for my model, I just used this one

http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Soekris_Net4801_how-to

Got the whole thing on an USB-stick but it wont boot. Now the question is why.

The stick is working, I had an ISO dd'ed to it and it did boot (unfortunately I can not use that, because the Soekris only has a serial console and with VGA-ISO you would see only rubbish or nothing in your terminal, so I have to configure the bootloader for comconsole=ttyS0 - I just know that it jumped to the boot-loader because I saw an "ISOLINUX" line popping up just before I lost display).

The Gentoo I have on my stick works too, I was able to boot VirtualBox with it (directly as a raw disk, not only the image!)

When I plug it into my Soekris, it starts up until it tries to boot, then I see the LED on the stick flashing (so soekris is accessing it) then nothing happens and like 30 sec later the LED flashes again a few times and then another few seconds later, I get "No boot device available" from the BIOS.

I have a FreeBSD on stick with serial console configured, and this one boots smoothly... What can I try to figure out the problem?
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

Welcome to Gentoo.
Your howto says
http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Soekris_Net4801_how-to wrote:
Now we need to download and apply the basic system onto the flash card. It is very important that you use a stage3 i586 release, since the Soekris cpu doesn't support i686.


Thats a very old howto, these has been no i585 Gentoo iso for a very long time now. What is the exact name of the ISO file you downloaded?
If it has i686 in its name, it won't work. The symptoms will be booting starts, then it restarts in an endless cycle when the CPU tries to execute an i686 instruction that it doesn't have.

The x86 ISO should work on your CPU - take care to get the x86, not i686 stage3 too.
However, I recall a bug about the x86 ISO not booting on some i586 class hardware. You might want to check bugs.gentoo.org about that.

You can always use another system to make an x86 install that will then boot on your Soekris.
The x86 install should run on a 486DX or later.

--- edit ---
Ignore most of the above.
http://soekris.com/net6501-50-board.html wrote:
1 Ghz Intel Atom E6xx
Thats either a i686 or an amd64 class CPU. You might want to start with System Rescue CD on a USB stick but you will have to pass the kernel some boot options to get a serial consile.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moved from Other Things Gentoo to Installing Gentoo.

Its gentoo on a mainstream arch, even if there is no VGA console.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, sorry I forgot to mention. I know about the i586 problem, so I used stage3-i486-20130528.tar.bz2

But anyhow, its not the kernel that does not work. Grub won't even come up.

I had a try with Archlinux too where the bootloader came up but then crashed because Arch is i686/x86_64 only with Gentoo I dont even see grub.

Yeah sorry I should have mentioned the CPU. I am not sure, what kernel runs on Intel Atom, just that i686 and 64 doesn't.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

I've been reading the Intel datasheet for the E6xx CPU. Well, its more a book than a sheet.
It has on chip video, and lots of video acceleration. It will certainly run i686 and maybe amd64.
It even supports virtualisation.

Are you really sure you don't have a VGA or some other video port?

When does the boot fail?
In your own install or booting the install live CD image?

If the former ... "grub does not come up" run fdisk and make sure that exactly one partition on your boot drive is marked as bootable.
Some BIOSes are very picky about that. Linux does not care but the BIOS may not see your drive as bootable without that.

If you are still at the installing stage, how did you create your USB image ?
The Gentoo ISOs are not very user friendly that way, hence I suggested System Rescue CD, which is Gentoo based and allows you to follow the handbook with no extra steps.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
piwwo,

I've been reading the Intel datasheet for the E6xx CPU. Well, its more a book than a sheet.
It has on chip video, and lots of video acceleration. It will certainly run i686 and maybe amd64.
It even supports virtualisation.

Are you really sure you don't have a VGA or some other video port?


Yes certainly. It has one sub-D and thats where my serial terminal is connected to.

NeddySeagoon wrote:

When does the boot fail?
In your own install or booting the install live CD image?


In my own install. I have no live CD image as it has no serial console and my external USB CDROM-Drive doesnt work on the Soekris as well (it doesnt even spin up), only an Arch-ISO on USB-Stick shows "ISOLINUX..." then rubberish then crashes.
The BIOS has a shell and a command to show the boot drives
> show BootDrives
81 80 FF FF
Where 81 is the USB, 80 is the internal mSATA (thats where I want to get gentoo on finally - but first I need a Linux that starts with serial console at all)
typing
> boot 81
the same happens, accesses USB then complains about no drive found.

Quote:

If the former ... "grub does not come up" run fdisk and make sure that exactly one partition on your boot drive is marked as bootable.
Some BIOSes are very picky about that. Linux does not care but the BIOS may not see your drive as bootable without that.


Yes I created two partitions using cfdisk:
1st primary: Swap space. (hd0,0)
2nd primary: Linux, bootable. (hd0,1)
Thats what I set root to in the grub shell
> root=(hd0,1)
> setup (hd1) (since it was sdb during installation)

Quote:

If you are still at the installing stage, how did you create your USB image ?
The Gentoo ISOs are not very user friendly that way, hence I suggested System Rescue CD, which is Gentoo based and allows you to follow the handbook with no extra steps.


I have a debian on Virtualbox and chrooted into the mounted Gentoo USB partition and worked as the howto said.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

I suspect your install now sees the boot drive as hd0, not hd1 as it was when you installed grub.
Part of the grub install process edits the binaries as they are installed, so that the various bits of grub can find one another.

I assume you are using grub1 ?
You may need to write a device.map file to feed to grub so it can swap your drives during install.
info grub will tell you more.

Your cfdisk commands did not mention setting the bootable flag. As I posted earlier, some BIOSes won't boot from the drive unless its set on exactly one partition.
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piwwo
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But wouldnt BIOS access MBR and then load grub and the MBR usually has no partition, its just at the beginning of a disk if I understood it right?
I will still to look into device.map
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

The BIOS will load the MBR, read the partition at the end of the MBR and may stop there if no partitions are marked bootable.
Code:
 $ sudo fdisk -l
Password:

Disk /dev/sda: 8069 MB, 8069677056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 981 cylinders, total 15761088 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048       64258       31105+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           64259     3132673     1534207+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3         3132674    15759764     6313545+  83  Linux
not all BIOSes do this test.
If the test is carried out and it passes, the code loaded from the MBR is executed. This is grubs stage1.

All stage1 does is to load the next 20 sectors or so, using BIOS calls. Thats grubs stage1.5.
Stage1.5 can read exactly one filesystem type. When stage1 is done, it jumps to stage1.5. Stage1.5 reads stage2 from /boot/grub/ and jumps to it. Stage2 displays the menu and loads your kernel and initrd, if you have one, then jumps to the kernel.

This process breaks if stage1 is not loaded ... often you get an error from the BIOS
Stage1 cannot load stage1.5, grub may give you an error here.
Stage1.5 cannot load stage2. again, you may get an error from grub.
If stage2 cannot find menu.lst (a symlink to grub.conf), you get a GRUB> prompt, which you can use to get booted.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But mine are bootable.

Code:

~# fdisk /dev/sdc
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.22.2).

Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 61.8 GB, 61847109632 bytes, 120795136 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1              32     3999743     1999856   83  Linux
/dev/sdc2   *     3999744   120795135    58397696   83  Linux

Command (m for help):



Stage2 is where it fails then, I think at least--- I wish BIOS had a debug mode to see what it does and where exactly it fails
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

I wonder if grub needs some special configuration to play nicely on a serial console?
By default it loads a VGA 640x480 splash screen, which you won't see

The.tldp suggests that its does.

What do you have in grub.conf ?
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piwwo
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Still not booting... -_-

But I have no clue if the devicemap is right

Code:

mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/sdc2

nano /boot/device.map

(hd2) /dev/sda

grub

> root (hd2,1)
> setup (hd2)

((is this right?))


Grub installs successfully but doesn't boot...

I also downloaded SystemRescureCD and dd'ed it onto another Stick
It doesn't boot either...

Just for a test, I dd'ed an ArchLinux CD onto that 2nd stick again and tried to boot
it comes up
ISOLINUX with copyright and stuff
Then a few lines of ASCII-crap then stops...


Last edited by piwwo on Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:07 pm; edited 3 times in total
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

System Rescue CD comes with a script to install it to a USB stick.
I don't think dd works. When you use the provided script to make a System Rescue CD bootable USB stick, you can use the spare space on the stick for other things.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Code:

cat /mnt/sdc2/boot/grub/grub.conf

# This is a sample grub.conf for use with Genkernel, per the Gentoo handbook
# http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=10#doc_chap2
# If you are not using Genkernel and you need help creating this file, you
# should consult the handbook. Alternatively, consult the grub.conf.sample that
# is included with the Grub documentation.

default 0
timeout 30
#splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

serial --unit=0 --speed=19200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-r5
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-gentoo-0618-1 real_root=/dev/sda2 console=ttyS0,19200n8

#kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/sda3
#initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.24-gentoo-r5

# vim:ft=conf:
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

If your /boot is the /dev/sdc1 you showed earlier, then
Code:
title Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-r5
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-gentoo-0618-1 real_root=/dev/sda2 console=ttyS0,19200n8

won't work.

You should get as far as seeing
Code:
Gentoo Linux 2.6.24-r5
on the console, but root (hd0,1) tells grub to look on the second partition for kernel files.

The kernel may not like the real_ prefix on what should be root= either.
real_root is intended to be used by the initrd, but you don't have an initrd.

Do you get any error messages on the serial console at all ?
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes its (hd0,1) because sda2 is the boot partition. sda1 is swap.

No I get no error messages but BIOS saying no boot drive found.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

Time for a recap.

The BIOS message means that
a) the BIOS is not seeing your drive at all,
b) its looking for a bootable flag and not finding it (we know thats OK on your drive)
c) the signature word is missing at the end of the partition table. fdisk will warn about that.
Whatever, grub is not being loaded at all or you would not get a BIOS produced message.

At what stage of the install are you?
Trying to boot a live image to accomplish the install or having completed the install, trying to reboot into it?
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have completed the install as far as the howto goes

howto wrote:

Exiting the environment
The system is now finished, and you may exit the chroot and unmount all flash partitions:

# exit
# umount /mnt/gentoo/proc
# umount /mnt/gentoo/dev
# umount /mnt/gentoo
If everything went well, the system is now ready for booting in the Soekris Net4801 box itself. If you encounter any problems, I've added a few notes below, which might help you solve some of those issues.


I installed it using Debian on a Vbox and working on my USB-Stick like the howto said (what it refers to as "Flash card"). I baked the kernel, got portage copied to it, worked in chroot environment where I was even able to run commands like
# emerge syslog-ng
# emerge vixie-cron
# rc-update add syslog-ng default
# rc-update add vixie-cron default

I put the stick into my Soekris and BIOS won't boot it.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wrote SysrescureCD to a stick now using ./usb_inst.sh and it doesn't boot as well

... Could it be, that the soekris has some problems with grub for some reason?

anyhow, i will give up for today...
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 4:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

piwwo,

net6501_manual wrote:
Preloading the storage device on another system. The net6501 uses a simple algorithm for sector
translation for storage devices, if there are less than 1024 tracks, it will use the native CHS that the
device reports, if more than 1024 tracks, it will use LBA translation. So the host system will need to
match that, and that will also normally be the case. In some cases it may be necessary to change the
translation settings in the host system’s BIOS or to do manually configuration of the boot loader used.


This means that the drive your Gentoo install is on could change geometery between being installed and being booted.
That would be a bad thing. With a 64G drive, you should be OK.

As you get BIOS generated error messages, grub has not even been seen.
net6501_manual wrote:
2.4
Monitor Commands
boot [drive]
Load operating system from a boot device, using int19 system call. Drive can either be a valid int13 drive
entered as a hexadecimal number, or a special number. For example “80” will be first fixed disk drive,
normally the first SATA disk on the net6501, and that is also the default if no parameter is entered.
Currently defined special number is “F0”, which will try to boot over the network, using the PXE boot
ROM.

This implies that the net6501 will always try to boot from the first SATA device, unless you tell it otherwise.
If your storage is not SATA, or is SATA but attached to the second SATA connector, it may not be found.
A PC will scan drives but drive scanning functionality may not be in your BIOS.

Try using the boot command with other drives. A different error, or no error at all would be a step in the right direction.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes I know about the drives. The first drive is 80 its the internal Sata
As I wrote earlier, I tried to boot 81, it doesnt work.

piwwo wrote:

In my own install. I have no live CD image as it has no serial console and my external USB CDROM-Drive doesnt work on the Soekris as well (it doesnt even spin up), only an Arch-ISO on USB-Stick shows "ISOLINUX..." then rubberish then crashes.
The BIOS has a shell and a command to show the boot drives
> show BootDrives
81 80 FF FF
Where 81 is the USB, 80 is the internal mSATA (thats where I want to get gentoo on finally - but first I need a Linux that starts with serial console at all)
typing
> boot 81
the same happens, accesses USB then complains about no drive found.


Besides of that, if I just stick in the FreeBSD-Stick not typing anything, the thing loads smoothly (and I am close to lose it and just use FreeBSD...)
The mSATA (80) is empty, so it walks thru the BootDrives. As said, it accesses the USB- it has a LED that flashes on read or write access. FF means "no drive", F0 means PXE (which I disabled in the soekris BIOS).
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@piwwo:
I just got my Soekris 6501-70, since i don't have harddrives yet i can only boot from USB 8)

I got it working, but it needed a bit of tweaking.
I started off using: The live DVD downloaded from here http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml
Unetbootin allows you to transform such an image into a bootable USB stick. This does more than just DD'ing the ISO to the USB stick.
After you've done this, it's best to test it with "regular" hardware, to see if it works.
The bootloader should be syslinux, and in the USB stick there should be a syslinux.cfg.
Edit that to add the lines at the top of the file:
Code:

SERIAL 0 19200 0x303
CONSOLE 0

This will stop it from using "VGA" hardware (absent in the soekris but emulated by BIOS) and will use the serial port. It's best to set the bitate the same as the bitrate in combios (19200 is the default).
Further in the file you'll find the individual menu entry's. Find all the append= statements and add: console=ttyS0,19200n8
This will make sure you'll see linux booting and get a login prompt.

Also keep in mind when installing that grub is known to have some issues, setting conmute=enabled in the BIOS is one of the workarounds.

If you're not a member already, i can highly recommend the soekris tech mailing list: http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 7:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes I have syslinux on my arch boxes and was just thinking about using that instead of grub, because all sticks that go ttill the bootloader at least used another loader than grub. I don't know why grub fails on soekris but .. well
Unfortunately I had no luck installing syslinux either. I used this http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Syslinux but failed (and I have no idea why they use extlinux)...

I will now try Unetbootin to create a stick from the live DVD
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just saying: syslinux (on a stick created with unetbootin) boots
There are still some problems but I think I should be able to tweak them.
At least I got past the bootloader menu bringing up the kernel

I should have used syslinux earlier, no clue still why grub is so bitchy

Thanks all so far.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@pa4wdh: I can not find the rootfs, would you be so kind and show your kernelparameter, especially root=? root=/dev/ram0 seems not to work
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