Re: upgrading i386 kernel on AMD64
"Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org> writes:
> On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 11:10:15PM +0200, Frederik Schueler wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 07:53:28PM +0200, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
>> > I have installed Debian-i386 and Debian-amd64 on a new machine. For the i386
>> > install I used a sarge snapshot from July, which worked great. Only this
>> > installed a 2.6.6 kernel, which I'd like to update to 2.6.8. On the AMD64
>> > installation, I simply installed new debian kernel-images and everything is
>> > fine. when I try the same on the i386 install, however, those new kernels do
>> > not boot, I tried 2.6.8-1-386, 2.6.8-1-k7, 2.4.26-1-386, and even a self
>> > compiled 2.6.8 starting with the (working) 2.6.6 config.
>>
>> a 64bit kernel-image for i386 is sitting in NEW since a week now, it
>> should go into sid as soon as ftp-masters have time to add it.
>>
>> For the time being, you could either install the amd64 kernel-image into
>> your i386 installation with dpkg --force-architecture, or just copy the
>> modules to the correct place and setup lilo to boot the amd64 kernel
>> from pure64 and use your i386 installation as root. Or do you intend to
>> run a 32bit k7 kernel-image on your i386 installation?
>
> I have a Debin/amd64 and a Debian/i386 installation on the box. Since some
> programs do not work yet on amd64 (openoffice, xprt segfaults everytime the
> machine boots, and I guess IDL for linux will not run, other than that,
> pure64 is great), it will be used in i386 mode most of the time, I guess (I
> wont be using it...). With a 64bit image for i386, is the machine running
> linux-i386, will all linux-i386 software work? I do have amd64 kernels
> installed, in a pure64 installation, but that does not allow me to run i386
> programs, AFAIK? Or am I mistaken here? What I want is a (current) kernel
You are mistaken. The amd64 kernel has the 32bit emulation layer
compiled in so it is fully capable of running an i386 linux
installation. You can also install ia32-libs and the (not quite
perfected) ia32-libs-openoffice.org and openoffice.org debs from
/openoffice to run the 32bit OO under pure64. Other programs run just
as well but if you have a bunch of them better use a complete 32bit
chroot.
Or boot the i386 with a 64bit kernel and the pure64 as chroot. Depends
one what you want more.
> that boots the machine in i386 mode, so that the Debian/i386 installation
> works. I don't care if it is an 386, k7, k8, or q42 kernel. When I
> installed the debian (i386) kernels, which use an initrd, I was hoping that
> they would just work, but they don't, even when I configure grub to use sda
> instead of hde. Those kernels simply do not see the SATA controller.
The sata is known to make problems with the mkinitrd and bugs have
been filed about it. If that matches your problem is hard to
tell. Have you tried building a custom kernel without initrd and the
scsi sata enabled (instead of ide sata as 2.6.6 had)?
>> > The i386 install kernel sees
>> > the SATA disk fine, and detects it as hde. The AMD64 kernels sees the disk
>> > as sda. All newer i386 kernels, the ones provided by debian, as well as
>> > self-built, do not see the SATA disk at all, and I wonder why, and how to
>> > fix this.
>>
>> starting with 2.6.8 there are no sata disks named /dev/hdX anymore, all
>> sata disks are no /dev/sdX. ide-sata is obsolete now and will be removed
>> in favour of only one sata driver being in the kernel.
>
> That is fine with me, but should't the new debian kernels recognize the SATA
> controller then?
Only if mkinitrd adds the module.
>> > It would be great if somebody could explain, what I am doing wrong, and why
>> > the disk is ide on i386 (IDE_SATA?), and sda on AMD64.
>>
>> It will be sda on both kernels if you install a 2.6.8 based image for
>> i386 too. maybe you set the ROOT variable in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf
>> to point to hdg so it does not find your root, on i386?
>
> # If this is set to probe mkinitrd will try to figure out what's needed to
> # mount the root file system. This is equivalent to the old PROBE=on setting.
> ROOT=probe
>
> You think this could make mkinitrd use hde insted of sda? Why would would
> this have any influence on my selfcompiled kernel, which does not use initrd
> at all (AFAIK, initrd is still blackmagic to me, and I have never seen it on
> m68k). If I change ROOT to sda and reinstall those kernel-images to have
> initrd recreated, I can not mess up the working 2.6.6 which uses hde, can I?
That sounds reasonable. If in doubt about its savety make backups of
the old kernel and initrd. I myself just build a initrd less kernel
due to exactly those problems.
> Thanks,
> Christian
MfG
Goswin
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