Tap tap tap, this thing on?

["Bob Ogden" <bob@contact.omen.com.au>]

I've been trying to get a reply regarding install problems on a pc164 from
this list for the last couple of week without luck . Can someone at least
acknowledge that I'm getting through

Thanks.

Summary: I can get MILO working no problem but the install fails with
either "Cant mount root FS on ..." , "try passing init= to kernel" or
"unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address..." These all
happen at the point where the ramdisk image is meant to be loaded.

I have searched the archives for this list without anything coming to
light that has made any real difference :(. 

=====

Sent this last week with no reply so I'll try again... With additions.

In <[🔎] 20010112150354.A31405@debian.org>, on 12/Jan/2001 
   at 03:03 PM,(-0600 GMT)
"Christopher C . Chimelis" <chris@debian.org> said:

>This reminds me, the current potato boot floppies do NOT work -- problems
>with the name of the drivers disks or something like that.

>Whomever takes over should look into that problem as soon as possible.

>C

Oh great. Now you tell me :-/. I've been banging my head against this
pc164 for ages without getting anywhere. 

So tell me... what do I need to do to get this beast upwardly mobile? Try
to keep it simple please,  I'm not sure I know what I am doing with this
:). FYI I can get MILO going ok and the kernel generally loads ok too but
when the ramdisk is attempted it will fail [1]. I should also mention that
the archive of this list has not been able to help me, though I'm sure the
info is in there if I only knew how to extract it, so even just a pointer
to where I can find what I need will be useful. 

Thanks.

[1] I've had mostly failures to mount root fs on... but depending on what
parameters I give to MILO I get varying results, All not good. 

Working off of 2.2.17 CD and/or 
ftp.au.debian.org/pub/debian/dists/potato/main/disks-alpha/current/


BTW, Ive run into something that I _think_ may have bearing on the matter
on the FreeBSD site, vis...

Q: I go to boot from the hard disk for the first time after installing
   FreeBSD, the kernel loads and probes my hardware, but stops with
   messages like:

     changing root device to wd1s1a
     panic: cannot mount root

   What is wrong?  What can I do?

Q: What is this 'bios_drive:interface(unit,partition)kernel_name' thing
   that is displayed with the boot help?

A: There is a longstanding problem in the case where the boot disk is
   not the first disk in the system.  The BIOS uses a different numbering
   scheme to FreeBSD, and working out which numbers correspond to which
   is difficult to get right.

   In the case where the boot disk is not the first disk in the system,
   FreeBSD can need some help finding it.  There are two common situations
   here, and in both of these cases, you need to tell FreeBSD where the 
   root filesystem is.  You do this by specifying the BIOS disk number, 
   the disk type and the FreeBSD disk number for that type.

   The first situation is where you have two IDE disks, each configured as
   the master on their respective IDE busses, and wish to boot FreeBSD
from
   the second disk.  The BIOS sees these as disk 0 and disk 1, while 
   FreeBSD sees them as wd0 and wd2.

   FreeBSD is on BIOS disk 1, of type 'wd' and the FreeBSD disk number
   is 2, so you would say:

     1:wd(2,a)kernel

   Note that if you have a slave on the primary bus, the above is not
   necessary (and is effectively wrong).

   The second situation involves booting from a SCSI disk when you have
   one or more IDE disks in the system.  In this case, the FreeBSD disk
   number is lower than the BIOS disk number.  If you have two IDE disks
   as well as the SCSI disk, the SCSI disk is BIOS disk 2, type 'da' and
   FreeBSD disk number 0, so you would say:

     2:da(0,a)kernel

   To tell FreeBSD that you want to boot from BIOS disk 2, which is
   the first SCSI disk in the system.  If you only had one IDE disk,
   you would use '1:' instead.

   Once you have determined the correct values to use, you can put the
   command exactly as you would have typed it in the /boot.config file
   using a standard text editor.
   Unless instructed otherwise, FreeBSD will use the contents of this
   file as the default response to the 'boot:' prompt.

_Is_ this something to do with the problem? Is it posible to reproduce the
fix with kernel parms with potato? If so what may they be?

Thanks :).

-- 
/-- Bob Ogden  bob@contact.omen.com.au --------------/
/  -... --- -...   --- --. -.. . -.       Finger  for PGP key -----/

Only 31554786529 seconds till the _next_ millennium!