Re: kernel 2.2 & debian bootdisks woes (was: Re: new bootdisks coming soon)

[Steve Dunham <dunham@cse.msu.edu>]

Eric Delaunay <delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr> writes:

> Steve Dunham wrote:
> > Eric Delaunay <delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr> writes:
> > 
> > > [1  <text/plain; US-ASCII (7bit)>]
> > > 
> > > I hope I will release a new set of bootdisks thrusday evening (need to update
> > > my local mirror one more time before).
> > > I just tried a bit to deal with 2.2 kernels with no success.  It don't eject
> > > floppy automatically after the rescue disk was read and I displays the
> > > following message:
> > >  Warning: unable to open an initial console.
> > > when booting from the net (tftpboot.imh method).
> > 
> > That's odd, I've successfully used late 2.1.x kernels with the old
> > root image.  I'll take a look at your images tomorrow.  (Technically,
> > /dev/console should be major 5 minor 1 with the new kernels, but I
> > don't know if it makes that much of a difference.)

> It was using a serial console display.

> Anyway, I'm now using my latest bootdisks merged with a 2.2.0 kernel
> on SparcClassic with linux console (cg3 + monitor) still with no
> success.  It displays the first dialog box (choosing color or
> mononochrome) but the keyboard is not responding at all (not arrow
> keys, no enter, ...) :-( However, I can switch to other VTs (via
> ALT+F?) and in all of them but the first, the keyboard is working
> fine.  Ok, since the second VT is working, I launched dbootstrap in
> it.  It seems to work well: I can do configuring the keyboard,
> partitioning the hard drive, and so on.  I just run in trouble when
> I run a subshell from dbootstrap.  Outputs of the programs I run
> from the shell are going to the second VT as usual, but the shell's
> prompt is not displaying in this VT but in the first one !!!  stderr
> outputs are sent to the first VT as well.  In the first VT I can see
> the following message displayed at ash starting time:

I just had the same problem (no keyboard) on an UltraSparc1 with a
2.2.0 kernel.  (Using the first patch that David Miller made
available.)

The problem is somehow related to changes since the last version of
the boot-floppies package.  If you take the old root.bin and attach it
to a 2.2.0 kernel, it works fine.  (You can even start another
"dinstall" on VC2 and create a subshell.)

As far as I can tell, there are no differences between the devices.
Maybe "init" is doing something different?



Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu