Bug#343674: [arm] Installation report - etch beta1 on netwinder

[Jurij Smakov <jurij@wooyd.org>]

On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, Joey Hess wrote:

> Jurij Smakov wrote:
> > It looks like the netwinder has a hard limit on the size of the netboot
> > image. That's what I get when trying to netboot etch beta1 on it:
> >
> > Autoboot - Press the 'star' key to abort autoboot [5 4 3 2 1 ]
> > Receiving bootfile netwinder.img from bootserver 192.168.1.102
> > Transferring block 8200 (4198400 bytes)<1>Unable to handle kernel paging
> > request at virtual address c80041e0
> > current->tss.memmap = 00008000
> > *pgd = 002e3001, *pmd = 002e3001, *pte = 00000000
> > Internal error: Oops: 0
> > CPU: 0
> > pc :[c00d424c] lr :[c000f1e0]
> > sp : c02ec770  ip : 4f1c25b1  fp : c02ec794
> > r10: c7bda018  r9 : 94197b58  r8 : 2953dd7e
> > r7 : 70de65fd  r6 : e3cb338d  r5 : 59cc359f  r4 : 7e4b3691
> > r3 : e2b8edd9  r2 : 000001e0  r1 : c7bda5f8  r0 : c8004200
> > Flags: nzCv  IRQs on  FIQs on  Mode SVC_32
> > Process swapper (pid: 1, stackpage=c02ec000)
> > Stack:
> > Backtrace:
> > Function entered at [<c00d3ff4>] from [<c000f1e0>]
> > Code: ba000003 e93113f8 e92013f8 e2522020 aafffffb
> >
> > Note that it only reads 4198400 bytes (8200 512-byte blocks), while the
> > netboot image size is 4357664. The sarge image, which is slightly smaller
> > (4080492 bytes) fits into this memory region and boots fine.
>
> Is there any way to pass a ramdisk_size= parameter to the kernel on the
> netwinder?

There is, but it will most probably not help. The messages above are 
produced by the machine's firmware (which is linux-based), and the oops is 
happening while the *firmware* is downloading the netboot image into the 
memory region reserved for it, and running out of space. The debian kernel 
has not even started booting at this point.

Best regards,

Jurij Smakov                                        jurij@wooyd.org
Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/                   KeyID: C99E03CC