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Bug#120950: install using woody boot-floppies from USB Floppy (Re: 120950)



Hi.

In <20020117212826.A965@fermi.stw.stud.uni-saarland.de>,
 on "Thu, 17 Jan 2002 21:28:26 +0100",
 with "Re: 120950",
  Christoph Berg <cb@heim-d.uni-sb.de> wrote:

cb> On Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 11:05:23AM +0900, Taketoshi Sano wrote:
cb> > Hi. Christoph. Sorry for looooooong delay.
cb> 
cb> Me too, I just got the time to download your boot image after
cb> Christmas. I tried to boot from this disk, but apparently, my notebook
cb> refuses to boot from floppy at the moment...

Might be caused with some BIOS setting of your notebook, I suppose.

cb> > I've created a lilo floppy with a customized 2.4.16 kernel.
cb> > It can load the compressed root image from the first SCSI disk
cb> > /dev/sda.  USB floppy drive appears as that device.
cb> 
cb> That's an interesting point, I don't think I have SCSI support in my
cb> kernel. I will try that for my USB floppy.

I'm using USB FDD with 2.2.19 on Debian 2.2 (potato)
 + usbmgr package which is backported from woody.

Without usbmgr (user-mode daemon), I can't use
hot-plug (connect and disconnect the FDD) feature.
In other word, if and only if I connect the FDD device
when the system boots up, I can use it without usbmgr.
After once I disconnect it, I can't use it anymore.
But it is no problem for installer, I think.
  
For normal usage, you need 

  a) hotplug (optionally hotplug-utils, and usbutils)
  b) murasaki (maybe the successor of usbmgr, but I don't know)

from woody.

hotplug is the authorized way which is described in linux
kernel source (Configure.help):

  Support for hot-pluggable USB devices
  CONFIG_HOTPLUG
   Say Y here if you want to plug devices into your computer while
   the system is running, and be able to use them quickly.  In many
   cases, the devices can likewise be unplugged at any time too.
  
   Enable this with KMOD, and your kernel will automatically
   call out to a user mode "policy agent" to load drivers and other
   modules needed to use USB devices you plug in.  With a bit of work,
   it can invoke other device setup tasks.  Get such agent software
   (at http://www.linux-usb.org/policy.html) and install it.

This is quoted from Configure.help of 2.2.20, but 2.2.19 and 2.4.16
has the same keyword "CONFIG_HOTPLUG" with the similar description.

But I've not used it yet.  When I searched "USB" with apt-cache 
search (someday in May last year, IIRC), I found the usbmgr, 
and I picked/tried it.  It worked.  So I continue to use it.

(And I don't enable "CONFIG_HOTPLUG" above in my kernel configuration
since it doesn't have much meaning for installer, I think.
If you like to use hotplug, then you have to recompile the kernel.)

cb> > I've put the image file of lilo-kernel-floppy as
cb> >  http://www.debian.or.jp/~sano/usbfdboot/usbfdboot-2-4-16-resc-image.bin
cb> > a readme.txt and used patches are also in
cb> >  http://www.debian.or.jp/~sano/usbfdboot/

I have rearranged the directories.

Now,

  http://www.debian.or.jp/~sano/usbfdboot/woody-3.0.18-cvs-boot-floppies/

has my USB FDD installer floppies (locally built from the cvs source of 
boot-floppies several days after the release of 3.0.18). 

There are

 1474560 Dec 29 08:53 resc1440.bin
 1474560 Dec 29 08:53 resc1440-s.bin
 1474560 Dec 29 08:53 drv14-1.bin
 1474560 Dec 29 08:53 root1440.bin

for rescue, rescue-safe, driver, and root floppy image.

And the patch for boot-floppies to add the USBFDD support
in root image: diff-usbfdboot-boot-floppies.txt
Ah, I find now that this diff file has confused output.
It was meant to be

--- rootdisk.sh.orig    Sat Dec 29 06:46:07 2001
+++ rootdisk.sh Sat Dec 29 06:45:28 2001
@@ -347,10 +347,6 @@
       # the boot floppies under UML  -- works fine for me...
       for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do mknod $R/dev/ubd$i b 98 $i; done
    fi
+   if [ "$usbfdboot" = "true" ]; then
+      mv $R/dev/fd0 $R/dev/fd0.std
+      ln -s $R/dev/sda $R/dev/fd0
+   fi
 
    (cd $R ; tar zcf $devtarball dev)
 fi
--- config.orig Sat Dec 29 07:10:08 2001
+++ config      Sat Dec 29 07:11:46 2001
@@ -93,6 +93,11 @@
 export MIRRORS := http://http.us.debian.org/debian
 
 ##
+## boot from usb FDD ?
+##
+export usbfdboot := false
+
+##
 ## How to achieve root
 ##   building boot-floppies often requires root access
 ##

But apparently I must have used "diff -u rootdisk.sh rootdisk.sh.orig" 
for first diff instead of "diff -u rootdisk.sh.orig rootdisk.sh".
I'll replace it the correct one when I can.

 ... Ouch!  Today, a user reported that the syslinux.cfg
in rescue image (both) has:

APPEND vga=normal noinitrd load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 ramdisk_size=16384 root=/dev/fd0 disksize=1.44 

and it should be

APPEND vga=normal noinitrd load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 ramdisk_size=16384 root=/dev/sda disksize=1.44 

In short, please replace /dev/fd0 with /dev/sda in syslinux.cfg.
This file can be edited by normal dos/windows editors, I think.
I'll replace it with the fixed one later.

(The patch above for boot-floppies to add USB FDD support
is apparently incomplete.  I'll tweak to use modified
syslinux.cfg when "usbfdboot = true" in config file.

There are also kernel patches for 2.2.20 in kernel-patches/
subdirectory.

  383 Dec 29 08:54 diff-2.2.20-drivers-block-rd-c-usbfdboot.txt
  372 Dec 29 08:54 diff-2.2.20-fs-super-c-usbfdboot.txt
  588 Dec 29 08:54 diff-2.2.20-init-main-c-usbfdboot.txt

are patches for drivers/block/rd.c, fs/super.c, init/main.c each.

As well as these above, I put the lilo kernel floppy image
for 2.2.20 and 2.4.16.

  http://www.debian.or.jp/~sano/usbfdboot/lilofloppy-2.2.20-usbfdboot
  http://www.debian.or.jp/~sano/usbfdboot/lilofloppy-2.4.16-usbfdboot

are those.

lilofloppy-2.2.20-usbfdboot:

 1474560 Dec 29 08:58 lilo-usbfdboot-2.2.20.bin   (boot/kernel floppy image)
     287 Dec 29 08:58 lilo.conf.usbfdboot         (lilo.conf used with my USB FDD)
    4096 Dec 29 08:58 patch-2.2.20		  (kernel patch for 2.2.20)
    1710 Dec 29 08:58 readme-ja.txt		  (Japanese documentation)
    1098 Dec 29 08:58 readme.txt		  (English translation of the above one)

lilofloppy-2.4.16-usbfdboot:

  1474560 Dec 29 08:58 usbfdboot-2-4-16-resc-image.bin   (boot/kernel floppy image)
  1041537 Dec 29 08:58 vmlinuz-2.4.16-usbfdboot		 (kernel image only)
     4096 Dec 29 08:58 usbfdboot-patch-2.4.16		 (kernel patch for 2.4.16)
    20067 Dec 29 08:58 config-2.4.16-usbfdboot		 (kernel configuration)
      287 Dec 29 08:58 lilo.conf.usbfdboot		 (lilo.conf used with USB FDD)
     1710 Dec 29 08:58 readme-ja.txt			 (Japanese documentation)
     1098 Dec 29 08:58 readme.txt			 (English translation)

cb> I will try during the next days after having sorted out things here...
cb> 
cb> thanks... Christoph

If you can't use resc1440.bin and resc1440-s.bin
from woody-3.0.18-cvs-boot-floppies/, then please
try usbfdboot-2-4-16-resc-image.bin.  

You may have some difficulties in installation setup 
since it can't use the prepared kernel module drivers
(so drv14-n.bin are no use in this case).

But 2.4.16 kernel has better ability on handling of USB devices
than 2.2.20 I suppose, and some notebook has broken BIOS which
refuses to boot with syslinux disk (my notebook (IBM i1200) had
such BIOS before the BIOS upgrade). In my case, lilo works well
with such broken BIOS PC.

Hope your success.  Good luck!
-- 
  Taketoshi Sano: <sano@debian.org>,<sano@debian.or.jp>,<kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>




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