Re: debian-mipsel installed on a Cobalt Qube2

[Neale Pickett <neale@debian.org>]

So then, "Soeren Laursen" <soeren.laursen@scrooge.dk> is all like:

> Well look here:
> 
> http://devel.alal.com/pipermail/cobalt-22/2002-July/000298.html

Right, that's exactly what I did.  Some gotchas:

*  If you create the filesystems outside the Debian installer, you must
   format the first partition with "mke2fs -r 0 -O none" or it won't
   boot and won't tell you why it isn't working.  The boot PROM will
   mount /dev/hda1 and try to load /boot/vmlinux.gz, but it only knows
   how to read 2.0.x-era ext2fs.  It does know about symbolic links
   though, at least for directories.  

   The NetBSD guys seem to think that if you hold down all four arrow
   buttons when you turn it on, it will boot /usr/games/.doug, but I
   haven't played around with that much.

*  If, on the serial console, you see:

      Jump_to_Real_Kernel: disk error, trying BFD again

   Check the jumpers on your hard drive.  The jumper on my Qube's hard
   drive had settings for "Primary" and for "Only disk in the chain".  I
   had it set to "primary" which let me install things, but wouldn't
   boot.  I had to put it on "Only disk" to get a boot.  This cost me
   three days :(

*  The Qube 2 can boot custom kernels, but AFAICT the Qube 1 (Qube 2700)
   can only boot the kernel it shipped with.  That means you're stuck
   with a 2.0.34 kernel.

*  If you want to compile a new 2.4.19 kernel, you will need to add the
   following line to the top of drivers/char/lcd.h:

     #define LCD_MINOR 140

*  I hacked up lcdutils to scroll long messages, and to correctly define
   the display size as 16.  Does the Raq actually have a
   20-character-wide display?  In any case, now my Qube can scroll out
   the longer lines of the Burma-Shave ads it's cycling through :)

     http://woozle.org/~neale/src/misc/lcdutils-0.2-neale.tar.gz


Since I've now installed four qubes, I've got tarballs of a base
install.  I'll put those up on my web site if anyone wants to go that
route.  You can create a new Qube hard drive from a box with a monitor
this way.  Much less painful for me, YMMV.

If you run into any problems, I probably did too and just forgot to
write it down.  Feel free to ask on this list (so the answer can get
archived) and I'll try to help out.

Good luck!

Neale