hello,
I installed Opensuse 10.2 on pegasos2 ODW and I have the following problem:
there is yaboot in hda7 but I cannot boot by using command boot hd:7 yaboot
I have done mkzimage command and when I copied file from /tmp to /boot directory /dev/hda5 teh content of that directory disappeared :/
when I copied it to the /root partition /dev/hda7 and tried to boot from OF I was prompted that there is uknown type of partition.
but when I boot from HD by using first installation CD it evaluates /root partition and finds /dev/hda7 and it does not boot normally since boot folder is empty
The samne procedure of booting by using the first installCD boots normally since itfinds /dev/hda7 as root partition and system boots normally.


Please advise.
With best wishes,

vedran

First of all: unless you have a beta firmware, hda7 is hd:6 (counting of partitions in firmware starts from zero). So, if hda7 is your last partition, it's no wonder that listing hd:7 results in error.

Another idea is, that OF does not know about ReiserFS (which was default for long on SUSE) and I also had sometimes trouble booting from EXT3 filesystems on large (80G+) HDDs.

Also note, that while yaboot worked on any machines I tested, I had some reports, that it does not work on very early Pegasoses.

If you want to be on the absolute safe side, create a kernel image with mkzimage and copy it to an ext2 or Amiga partition. You can also include kernel parameters, so you don't need to enter them, even if you don't use 'menu'.

Please let me know, if it still does not boot without a CD.

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

Hello,

I tried all versions of numbers of device and it did not work. My Pegasos is not old one.
Is teher anything that should be written in yaboot.cnf file which will point to proper partition during an attempt to boot automatically.


With best wishes,


vedran

Don't use yaboot. It won't work because of some missing support in current versions of the firmware.

You need to use mkzimage under SuSE to combine the kernel and relevant initrd.img, and can boot this resulting kernel directly.

_________________
Matt Sealey

And what about firmware upgrade ? It would be nice to see a official update OF for pegasos and acording to Fedora 7 documentation:
It would be nice to see it for efika too.

Even a recent machine can have older firmware version, and yaboot does not seem to work with any firmware earlier than 2004 Augustus.

openSUSE does not use yaboot.conf, but instead configuration is built into yaboot. Just rerun 'lilo' to get yaboot updated. But as Matt mentioned, most Pegasos users need to build their own boot images using mkzimage.

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

hello,

I booted boot image too and when I do
boot hd:6 suse102 (my image is called suse102)
I put number 6 since image is on /dev/hda7

I got the following error:
dos partition: unknown partition 6, suse102

please advise.
best wishes,


veki

'dos' partition means, that you use MSDOS partition type instead of Amiga on Pegasos? Booting works, but only from primary partitions (/dev/hda[1234]), not from logical partitions (hda5+).

In this case, you should use mkzimage to create a boot image, and put it somewhere on one of the primary partitions. You can boot from there, just make sure, that you don't forget root=/dev/hda7 as boot parameter. If you don't want to type it each time, you can use the '--cmdline' parameter of mkzimage to compile the boot parameter into the boot image. It gives about 5 seconds to the boot time, while you can modify boot parameters.

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

Hello,

I do not use DOS partition and that is what was question for me.
I willtry to change partitions and check booting.

thanks,

veki

*WARNING*: by changing partitioning type from msdos to amiga or vice versa, you loose all data on that HDD!

Run parted, and check for partition table type:
Another possibility is, that you use a filesystem type, not know by OF, like ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, or EXT3 with some special attributes.

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/

Hello,

I reinstalled opensuse and I noticed that opensuse recommends partitioning sometimes from /dev/hda5 or so.
However, I have done partitioning manually and it is OK now. Still it does not auto-boot but I can boot it from HD.


How to auto-boot it?

Thanks,


veki

The planned firmware update does not have the fixes for yaboot.

If anyone wants to know why it fails, feel free to ask (I put in a lot of work the last month to fully debug the 'why'). There are some solutions but none which will work with any existing Linux kernel :(

Actually, with a small kernel patch and something which I am writing now, it may be possible to update bootcreator with a new menu script that does a lot to solve the problem. Ubuntu, SuSE etc. all use bootcreator-made scripts on their CD to try and support Pegasos/Efika but not all of them provide the combined kernel and initrd image to make it work :(

_________________
Matt Sealey

Any ideas when it would be released ?
If you need anything in bootcreator let me know.

No idea of the release date. I suspect the same cold day in hell that MorphOS 2.0 arrives.

I sent you a mail with some "treats" but as of yet I have not gotten anything working re the boot loader part. That it relies on some kernel "feature" which does not really exist yet is part of the problem. Somehow setting the r3/r4 initrd arguments for a loaded Linux kernel is also a bit of a pain in the ass in the alternative. I am investigating how I can hardcode some assembler and do the jump and ELF parsing by hand (yikes).

Really the only solution is fixing the firmware filesystem interface (it's missing some really important things.. sigh..) but that's too big a job for 5 supported filesystems in the time we should release the firmware (70 days ago..)

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Matt Sealey

That's right, as any workaround you create now will not be available with any previously released installation media (but most of them use yaboot).

BTW: just three file systems (ext2 / fat / iso9660), as I guess, nobody would use yaboot from the two Amiga filesystems :-)

_________________
CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/