Re: Unable to boot into CompactFlash card - card not found by initrd
On 22/01/12 23:51, Michael Lange wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thus spoketh Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions@gmail.com>
> unto us on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:03:25 +1100:
>
> (...)
>>
>> Your laptop [*1] doesn't appear to have BIOS support for booting from
>> the CF card.
>> Having had the time to do a little Googling (about 10 minutes) there are
>> three possible routes (maybe more).
>> 1. Boot from GRUB installed on hdd, using kernel and initrd copied from
>> CF card install. Known to work[*2]
>
> That is what I am trying, however when the kernel tries to mount the root
> file system, it is unable to find the CF card. And this is the part which
> I cannot believe that it can't be fixed.
I suspect you are correct - I'm beginning to suspect you have a 16-bit
PCMCIA bus which would complicate things (and I don't know much about
them, or self-mutilation)
> I still believe that it might have to do with the CF card being marked as
> "removable" and the way udev handles these devices, however I don't have a
> "fixed" card at hand to verify this. In fact I am not even sure that it is
> "removable"; thunar shows it as removable device, however udevadm info
> says ATTR{removable}=="0" . Hmmm...
Perhaps, I wouldn't put too much stock in udev (it's like Wikipedia).
>
>> 2. Boot from GRUB installed on the hdd, using kernel and initrd on the
>> CF card. Should be possible.[*3]
>
> Does not work, because grub does not find the CF card.
Hence my request for the output of:-
grub> lspci
:-)
<snipped>
>>
>> [*2]
>> http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34290&sid=524430a36bb34681698429cdd8f16b0c
>
> This looks interesting, I will have a closer look at it and see if there
> is something I can try, one of these days. At a quick glance it looks
> like they needed to patch the initrd's init script, maybe I could try to
> adapt this.
>
<snipped>
>>
>> What is the output from:-
>> grub> lspci
>
> Basically the same as when being called from the running system, except
> that the "SD Host Controller" appears as "System Hardware".
Could you take a picture of the actual output, post it somewhere, and
post a link?
..or type in the information.
Also the lspci from a Live CD (if possible).
If it's lengthy put the info on paste.debian.net
>
>> What is the output from:-
>> grub> lsmod
>
> More than fits on the screen, is there something particular I should look
> for?
I don't know what modules are loaded by your system, so I don't know
what capabilities your GRUB has.
If you look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg you'll see modules loaded (insmod).
/boot/grub/command.lst will show you what commands are available to
GRUB. The starred entries to the left of the : are the commands, to the
right of the : are the modules they come from.
Adding further modules is simple, building new modules is slightly less
so. If a capability is missing from your kernel, and not supplied as a
module in your initrd it may be possible to add it as a GRUB modules.
I'd need to know your PCMCIA hardware to know more.
>
> Thanks and regards
>
> Michael
>
<snipped>
Cheers (thanks for your patience)
--
Iceweasel/Firefox extensions for finding answers to Debian questions:-
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/Scott_Ferguson/debian/
NOTE: new update available for Debian Buttons
(New button for querying Debian Developer Package):-
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/debian-buttons/
Reply to: