On Sat, 24 Dec 2005, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
For the record: 15:57 < tbm> kyllikki: do you know whether it's true that the firmware on netwinder can only load netboot images smaller than about 4,100,000 bytes? see #343674
To set the record straight, that's not completely correct :-). Today's (Dec 23rd) netboot image is 4116916 bytes and it boots fine. I still think that the limit is exactly 4100 kilobytes, which is 4100 x 1024 = 4198400 bytes. That means that currently we have at most 80kB of space left. Under the circumstances I think that it makes sense just to build a separate netboot image for cats (which hopefully does not have such size restrictions).
A couple of comments regarding todays netboot install: it mostly went smoothly apart for two things. First, Linux ethernet device numbering does not match that of the firmware (eth0 in firmware becomes eth1 in linux and vice versa). So if one chooses eth0 as the default network interface during installation, it is neccessary to switch the cable to a different port to have a functional network.
Second, in the end of installation a screen comes up with the recommended settings for the firmware environment variables, required to make the machine bootable from the hard drive. Among other things, it advises the user to set the kernel filename (kernfile) variable to /vmlinuz. However, in the installation process the kernel is placed into /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-netwinder and no /vmlinuz symlink is created, so the system is unbootable with this setting. Either this screen should be corrected, or /vmlinuz -> /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-netwinder symlink should be created.
Best regards, Jurij Smakov jurij@wooyd.org Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC