On 01/18/2013 06:16 AM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
Jeremy Stanley wrote:I think the prime contender at the moment is that it's trying to talk to an non-existent framebuffer[...] And looking over the Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 Installation Guide for MIPS, the kernel does supposedly try to detect that you're invoking it from a serial console: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/mips/ch05s01.html.en (Though it's worth noting Debian-Installer does not claim support for IP27, so that context may not be relevant anyway.)With reference to that link, I've been trying things like boot -f dksc(0,1,0)/vmlinux.ip27-20060906.img append="console=/dev/ttyS0"without success. I think I need to spend time looking at the kernel options.If I go quiet it's because I'm looking into it and also have other demands on my time, so if anybody has any suggestions I'm still here and would be very interested to hear them.
I got Debian running on an IP27 sibling to that box, an Origin 2000 (2200 actually). I had problems with TFTP at the time (for whatever reason), and ended using a Gentoo MIPS live CD to get it to boot. From there I chrooted, and bootstrapped Debian.
I posted the notes of the install here: http://www.cs.unr.edu/~feller/linux/mips/ip27/debian_ip27.txtif anyone else wants to use them. These were for an Debian Etch based install, as that was current at the time. I also, updated the box (via apt) to Lenny w/o issue.
If you're using an older kernel, you will need this IP27 patch: http://www.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/ralf/ip27/ Newer kernels (Lenny and up) won't need that.After install, to boot from the PROM, you'll just need to drop to a command monitor and type:
boot -f <kernel> root=/dev/<root_partition>Additional notes (off of the top of my head) not reflected after a quick skim of that document:
IP27 doesn't use/need a bootloader, IIRC, so make sure /boot is is an ext2 partition. If so, when you drop to the PROM command monitor, you can 'ls' the contents, and subsequently 'boot -f ...'
I reinstalled this system about a year later off of the same notes, and made most other partitions xfs (as opposed to the ext3 in the notes), which proved to be beneficial.