Firewire change/solved

Message

sdidier · Post by **sdidier** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 1:12 am

A while back I was able to install gentoo on my firewire drive using Little Nemo's instructions. Since then I managed to hose the drive during an update and have also updated my main drive to 10.4.
I noticed that genkernel doesn't make all of the modules needed (sbp2 is not found when booting, and that initrd is now initramfs. How does that change the setup such that the root partition is no longer recognized? ( /dev/sda4 is not a valid root device) It will boot from openfirmware to the point of not recognizing the root partion.

Any help would be appreciated!

FearlessSpiff · Post by **FearlessSpiff** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 10:11 am

did you find a solution yet? I think i have the same problem...

Little Nemo · Post by **Little Nemo** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 3:45 pm

I haven't tried it yet, but I noticed that the new 2005.1 handbook for PPC includes instructions for setting up Gentoo to boot from Firewire. My mini-howto is obviously outdated.

FearlessSpiff · Post by **FearlessSpiff** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 7:12 pm

Yeah, i saw that too now!

But i'm stuck at the same place as you were before: I am missing the device entries /dev/sda*.
When i use your script i get the entries, but when trying to mount i get this:

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Mounting /dev/sda4 on /newroot failed: No such device or address.

I'm out of ideas. Maybe i'm missing some modules? dmesg Looks almost like in the live cd, but is missing the last few lines:

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SCSI device sda: 39070080 512-byte hdwr sectors (20004 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 39070080 512-byte hdwr sectors (20004 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: [mac] sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

I can plug the drive in and out, but won't get those lines...

Little Nemo · Post by **Little Nemo** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 8:24 pm

Did you put "rootdelay=10" in your yaboot.conf? It apparently takes a while for the fw/usb devices to initialize.

FearlessSpiff · Post by **FearlessSpiff** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 8:48 pm

Yup, i did. Just trying with 60, and looking into genkernel config if something is missing.
Btw, links rulez!

FearlessSpiff · Post by **FearlessSpiff** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 9:13 pm

Ok, back to OS X...

It is not working. I should enter a "valid" root device, but there is none! I even tried with "real_root=0x804". Read that in some Debian forum...

e-tigger · Post by **e-tigger** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:05 am

Does anyone know how genkernel works ot create the initramfs?

Because it is NOT a normal cpio archive that I have be led to believe a initramfs is supposed to be.
I say this because if you uncompress and un cpio it all you get is a few measly directories.

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 mkdir /var/tmp/irfs; cd /var/tmp/irfs
gunzip -c /boot/initramfs-<Kernel-version> |cpio -ivmud

Turns a 2+MB compressed cpio archive into a few hundred KB of uncompressed directories.
?Badmath?

Try adding some additional module ot this uncompressed initramfs and
then re cpio and compres it and your bookup will fail.

Yes, I already know how to compile a monolithic kernel.. I also know how to load RedHat in all it's big-fat-glory.

But this initramfs style seems gentoo (maybe just genkernel) specific and I'd like to
understand how and why this initfamfs is unique. And I find genkernel a very handy tool for consistantly creating
new kernels.

capira · Post by **capira** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:34 pm

To e-tigger
Have a look here. It explains how to uncompress an initramfs ... but i do not know yet how to pack again.

e-tigger · Post by **e-tigger** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:47 pm

Thanks for the link.

It's a shame that initramfs is still such a black art

Firewire change/solved

Firewire change/solved

Same problem but x86