serial console, was Re: d-i built (but not tested)
On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 01:48:31PM +1000, Finn Thain wrote:
> >
> > First thing I found was that the mac kernel has the serial console
> > disabled. Is that normal for di kernels?
>
> d-i kernels are no different from 'regular' kernels (they're repacked,
> but not recompiled). If the serial console doesn't work from d-i, it
> won't work from the installed system, either--unless the serial driver
> is compiled as a module or some such and not packaged for d-i, but I
> doubt that's the case.
Would users normally expect a debian kernel to include serial console
support? (I mean built-in, not modular, so that you can pass
"console=ttyS0" on the kernel command line to see what the kernel gets up
to.) If so, some options are needed in the mac kernel config--
CONFIG_SERIAL_PMACZILOG=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_PMACZILOG_TTYS=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_PMACZILOG_CONSOLE=y
>
> > My first boot attempt wasn't very successful -- my powerbook switches
> > itself off after the kernel logs this: Trying to unpack rootfs image
> > as initramfs...
> >
> > I'm sure I have seen powerbooks do this before. Too long ago to recall
> > the details though. The only remedy I could think of was the
> > ramdisk_size kernel argument but it didn't help. This bug also affects
> > the mainline kernel, BTW.
>
> ramdisk_size helps for actual ramdisks, but not for an initramfs (an
> initramfs is dynamic in size, and only uses as much memory as it needs
> to).
>
> > As a workaround, I converted the initrd from cpio to ext2 image.
>
> And then it worked? Weird.
It is wierd, but I think that the powerbook PMU chip will respond to
certain CPU exceptions this way. I've seen powerbooks respond to initramfs
like this before but I don't think I ever found out why.
But it seems that I have an old kernel binary with a built-in initramfs
that works. Another thing to add to the list bugs to investigate...
Anyway, your initramfs files work fine on my quadra 650.
Finn
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