Re: unable to boot debian on a IP22
Pierre Letouzey wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm currently involved in a compiler course where we use mips assembly
> for pedagogical reasons. Up to recently, we were only using emulators:
> spim, gxemul, maybe qemu some day. That's nice, but not so fun, so I
> searched and found two real pieces of mips hardware: a SGI Indigo
> (IP20) and an Indigo2 (IP22). They're both operational (Irix+NetBSD on
> the IP20, NetBSD on the IP22). But since I'm rather a Debian user than
> a BSD one, I also tried the Debian/mips port:
>
> - Concerning the IP20, I initially got confused by the Indigo vs. Indy
> naming convention and tried debian on it, of course with no luck,
> since (quoting http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/IP20):
> "The indigo is not supported ... Steve Hill is working
> on taking the NetBSD port to Linux."
> Has somebody more infos on this project ? I would be interested in
> contributing (up to my modest means, e.g. testing stuff, etc).
The best place to ask that is linux-mips@linux-mips.org, or the
#mipslinux channel at freenode.org.
> - What really puzzled me is my IP22, that obstinately refused to boot
> all the debian kernels I tried with it (sarge, woody, etch...), even
> if this machine seems to be supported according to debian docs.
> Each time, kernel gets downloaded via tftpboot, a message
> about initrd is displayed, and nothing more (see complete bootlog
> and some info found in the PROM at the end of the mail).
>
> -> in my suspect list is the video card, GU1-Extreme, that isn't
> supported by Xfree/Xorg. Could it prevent me to see anything, from
> the very start of the kernel booting ?
Yes, since the GU1-Extreme also isn't supported by a Linux console.
> I would be tempted to answer
> no, since I've tried today with a DIN-8 serial console cable, that
> works fine under NetBSD, and allows me to capture the bootlog that
> follows. But the linux boot stops at the same point as with regular
> keyboard+screen. Maybe is there some boot parameters to feed into
> the kernel ?
Boot with "bootp(): append=console=ttyS0", or "setenv console d1"
in the firmware. The installer manual explains that bit further.
> -> Something wrong with the bootloader ? From my tests with NetBSD,
> I know that this PROM can only launch ecoff image, not elf. But all
> the kernel image I've tested are MIPSEB ECOFF executable (according
> to "file").
It is actually a tip22 image which combines an ECOFF header with an
ELF kernel and a installer initrd.
Thiemo
Reply to: