[Debian-ppc64-devel] Re: How to start installation on an IBM power5

Roberto Suarez Soto robe@allenta.com
Tue, 24 May 2005 19:21:02 +0200


On May/23, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:

> > I haven't finish yet, I have to work out booting from disk.
> On OpenPower this works quite perfect. Did you use the correct mirror like 
> shown in the install.txt file? This would explain why your vscsi and veth 
> devices are not detected and the bootloader doesn't install...

	I also have problems booting from disk. But first of all: Cajus, you
rule :-) I netbooted your kernel and install image and installed Debian in a
pSeries 6e4 (2 Power4 CPUs, eepro100 network cards, some Symbios Ultra3 SCSI
card that I don't remember now). Everything went smoothly: all the hardware
was detected, the network was configured by dhcp, the partitioner worked
flawlessly (except for the stupidity of the person installing it, and that'd
be me, that tried to do some funky things with LVM and had to restart the
installation), and the mirror had all the packages needed. A really great work
:-)

	But I couldn't finish the installation. I got it booting yaboot
through SMS (I didn't use OpenFirmware, but I suppose it's the same :-?), but
afterwards something went wrong. This is what I see in the console (the first
line is yaboot's prompt):

boot: Linux
Please wait, loading kernel...
   Elf32 kernel loaded...
Loading ramdisk...
ramdisk loaded at 03e00000, size: 1716 Kbytes
instantiating rtas at 00600000 ... done
opening display /pci@400000000111/pci@2,6/pci@1/display@0... ok
copying OF device tree...done
starting cpu /cpus/PowerPC,POWER4@3...ok
Initializing fake screen: display
Calling quiesce ...
returning 0x00000000 from prom_init

	After this, the box reboots spontaneously. I did this mostly using a
serial console, but if done with a monitor and keyboard, the screen turns
"white on black" when running yaboot, and returns to "black on white" after (I
believe, it's quite fast and I didn't see it very well) the "starting cpu ..."
line.

	I don't know if it's something I did wrong, or what. The funny thing
is that it also displays (in the serial console) an ASCII diagram that I,
ignorant of everything pSeries, know nothing about:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RIO  Configuration
+------------- Remote I/O Attachment Summary --------------+
|     +---+           +---+                                |
|     |   |           |   |                                |
|     |   0-----------0   1---+                            |
|     |   |           |   |   |                            |
|     |   |           +---+   |                            |
|     |   |             0     |                            |
|     |   |                   |                            |
|     |   |                   |                            |
|     |   1-------------------+                            |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   2                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     |   3                                                |
|     |   |                                                |
|     +---+                                                |
|       0                                                  |
+----------------------------------------------------------+

	One more thing, in case it's useful: after the reboot, the boot is
configured as "slow boot" in the HMC menu. Maybe it detected something strange
and reverted to this "safe default" for better debugging :-?

	I don't know what's happening. Any help, any test that I can do, is
welcome. Thanks in advance :-)

-- 
	Roberto Suarez Soto				Allenta Consulting
	robe@allenta.com				   www.allenta.com