Installer changes...

Installer changes...

[Alex deVries]

As per Mike Shaver's suggestions, I've made some changes to root-be (now
version 0.04), which affects Linux-installer (now version 0.2).  The
changes listed are below. Tehy're all in teh GettingStarted directory.

root-be chnages include adding ftp, libncurses and /etc/protocols,
/etc/services and /etc/termcap.

There's also now a script in /etc/rc.d which creates new sd* devices if
they aren't created already.

- Alex

This is a package to install SGI/Linux from within Irix.

Changes
-------
0.2 May 13 1998
Alex deVries <adevries@engsoc.carleton.ca>
- fixed some things in root-be, including a script to create /dev/sd*
  devices on bootup
- fixed some INSTALL documentation

Re: Installer changes...

[Francis M. J. Hsieh]

At 12:37 AM 1998/5/13 -0400, you wrote:
>As per Mike Shaver's suggestions, I've made some changes to root-be (now
>version 0.04), which affects Linux-installer (now version 0.2).  The
>changes listed are below. Tehy're all in teh GettingStarted directory.
>root-be chnages include adding ftp, libncurses and /etc/protocols,
>/etc/services and /etc/termcap.
>There's also now a script in /etc/rc.d which creates new sd* devices if
>they aren't created already.

I'm sorry if this was discussed in the maillist.

Should there be /etc dirctory after I cpio into my partition? I can't
find /etc in my linux partition under installer prompt.

BTW, I use the kernel in /pub/test/vmlinux-indy-2.1.99.tar.gz and got
panic. The "NICE" panic message is:

[deleted]
sgiseeq.c: David S. Miller (dm@engr.sgi.com)
eth0: SGI Seeq8003 blah:blah:blah:blah
Partition check
   blah....
   blah....
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 32k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= optional to kernel.
[halt]

And I use the kernel in GetingStarted directory, and got panic, too.
("should not happened yet")
--
Francis Meng Juei Hsieh, Life Science Department, NTHU, Taiwan. 
Welcome to Life Science BBS bbs.life.nthu.edu.tw

Re: Installer changes...

[Alex deVries]

On Thu, 14 May 1998, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:
> I'm sorry if this was discussed in the maillist.
> Should there be /etc dirctory after I cpio into my partition? I can't
> find /etc in my linux partition under installer prompt.

There should be a /etc in the ext2 file system after you run the
installer.  As far as I know, there is no way to read an ext2 partition
from within Irix.

But it sounds like you're having problems even booting up...

> [deleted]
> sgiseeq.c: David S. Miller (dm@engr.sgi.com)
> eth0: SGI Seeq8003 blah:blah:blah:blah
> Partition check
>    blah....
>    blah....
> VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 32k freed
> Warning: unable to open an initial console.
> kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= optional to kernel.
> [halt]

Hm.  You might want to run it with 'init=/bin/sh' to skip init.

> And I use the kernel in GetingStarted directory, and got panic, too.
> ("should not happened yet")

I don't know about that.  That is Ralf's department.

- Alex

Re: Installer changes...

[Francis M. J. Hsieh]

At 03:47 PM 1998/5/13 -0400, Alex deVries wrote:
>On Thu, 14 May 1998, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:
>> I'm sorry if this was discussed in the maillist.
>> Should there be /etc dirctory after I cpio into my partition? I can't
>> find /etc in my linux partition under installer prompt.
>There should be a /etc in the ext2 file system after you run the
>installer.  As far as I know, there is no way to read an ext2 partition
>from within Irix.

Sure, I browse the partition in installer.

>But it sounds like you're having problems even booting up...
[deleted]
>Hm.  You might want to run it with 'init=/bin/sh' to skip init.

Well, didn't work. :~(
--
Francis Meng Juei Hsieh, Life Science Department, NTHU, Taiwan. 
Welcome to Life Science BBS bbs.life.nthu.edu.tw

Re: Installer changes...

[ralf]

On Thu, May 14, 1998 at 03:25:48AM +0800, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:

> [deleted]
> sgiseeq.c: David S. Miller (dm@engr.sgi.com)
> eth0: SGI Seeq8003 blah:blah:blah:blah
> Partition check
>    blah....
>    blah....
> VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 32k freed
> Warning: unable to open an initial console.
> kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= optional to kernel.
> [halt]

Alex already said it, try adding init=/bin/sh to the boot options.

> And I use the kernel in GetingStarted directory, and got panic, too.
> ("should not happened yet")

That was a real bug.  The kernel in GettinStarted in truely ancient.  I
replaced it by vmlinux-2.1.99.

  Ralf

Re: Installer changes...

[Michael Hill]

Francis M. J. Hsieh writes:

 > kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= optional to kernel.
 > [halt]

I too get this with the new root-be.

Mike
-- 
Michael Hill
Toronto, Canada
mdhill@interlog.com

Re: Installer changes...

[Francis M. J. Hsieh]

At 03:47 PM 1998/5/13 -0400, you wrote:
>On Thu, 14 May 1998, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:
>> I'm sorry if this was discussed in the maillist.
>> Should there be /etc dirctory after I cpio into my partition? I can't
>> find /etc in my linux partition under installer prompt.
>There should be a /etc in the ext2 file system after you run the
>installer.

This log is copied from my installation output. Is anyone having idea
what's wrong with the installation?

---->15# ./installer /dev/dsk/dks0d2s0
SGILinux Installer 2.6
Alan Cox (c) 1997 - based on the MacLinux68K installer 2.6
Copyright © 1997 by Christiaan Welvaart



mounted .
cjwsh>MAKEDEV                                
/dev doesn't exist, creating...
making standard devices & console
/dev/mem
/dev/kmem
/dev/null
/dev/port
/dev/zero
/dev/full
/dev/ram
/dev/tty
/dev/tty0
symlinking /dev/console to /dev/tty0

cjwsh>cpio root-be-0.04.cpio
.
.
.
[deleted]
.
.
.
D       dev/vcsa56
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa57
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa58
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa59
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa6
(failed to create)
D       dev/zero
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa60
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa61
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa62
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa63
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa7
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa8
(failed to create)
D       dev/vcsa9
(failed to create)
R       dev/need_disks_created
cjwsh>
--
Francis Meng Juei Hsieh, Life Science Department, NTHU, Taiwan. 
Welcome to Life Science BBS bbs.life.nthu.edu.tw

Re: Installer changes...

[Alistair Lambie]

Alex deVries wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 14 May 1998, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:
> > I'm sorry if this was discussed in the maillist.
> > Should there be /etc dirctory after I cpio into my partition? I can't
> > find /etc in my linux partition under installer prompt.
> 
> There should be a /etc in the ext2 file system after you run the
> installer.  As far as I know, there is no way to read an ext2 partition
> from within Irix.
> 
Alex,

It stops right at the file /dev/need_disks_created.  There are a bunch
of errors before this.  The /dev/need_disks_created file does not seem
to get written to disk correctly....the e2fsck cleans it up by the looks
of things.  I guess there is something about the cpio that the installer
doesn't like.

I tried extracting the cpio archive with Irix cpio and it seems fine.

Does that give any clues?  Just another thought...I'm running Irix
6.5beta.  Wonder if that could be causing a problem with the installer??

Cheers, Alistair


-- 
Alistair Lambie                         alambie@wellington.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics                      SGI Voicemail/VNET: 234-1455
Level 5, Cigna House,                                M/S: INZ-3780
PO Box 24 093,                                  Ph: +64-4-494 6325
40 Mercer St, Wellington,                      Fax: +64-4-494 6321
New Zealand                                 Mobile: +64-21-635 262

Re: Installer changes...

[Alex deVries]

On Thu, 14 May 1998, Alistair Lambie wrote:
> It stops right at the file /dev/need_disks_created.  There are a bunch
> of errors before this.  The /dev/need_disks_created file does not seem
> to get written to disk correctly....the e2fsck cleans it up by the looks
> of things.  I guess there is something about the cpio that the installer
> doesn't like.

Wow.  I really messed it up badly somehow.

I suspect it's having a problem writing a file that's 0 bytes long.  Let
me repackage it, and make the file 1 byte.

As we speak, I'm debugging the initrd stuff in the kernel to sort out why
initial ramdisks don't get loaded.

- Alex

Re: Installer changes...

[Francis M. J. Hsieh]

At 11:13 AM 1998/5/14 -0400, you wrote:
>Wow.  I really messed it up badly somehow.
>
>I suspect it's having a problem writing a file that's 0 bytes long.  Let
>me repackage it, and make the file 1 byte.

So, can anybody have time to fix it up? :-) I am new to sgi-linux and
want to "getting start" :-).


--
Francis Meng Juei Hsieh, Life Science Department, NTHU, Taiwan. 
Welcome to Life Science BBS bbs.life.nthu.edu.tw

Re: Installer changes...

[Alex deVries]

On Tue, 19 May 1998, Francis M. J. Hsieh wrote:
> At 11:13 AM 1998/5/14 -0400, you wrote:
> >Wow.  I really messed it up badly somehow.
> >I suspect it's having a problem writing a file that's 0 bytes long.  Let
> >me repackage it, and make the file 1 byte.
> So, can anybody have time to fix it up? :-) I am new to sgi-linux and
> want to "getting start" :-).

I know this has been a couple of days that I've let this slip... I'll take
care of it (hopefully) tonight.

In the meantime, you can get by with a bit of pain on 0.01d, which is in
the old subdir.  I used that yesterday when I mistakenly reformatted by
entire Linux system.  *sigh*. That was actually the first time I'd used
the installer, which is a bit odd, seeing as how I've been maintaining it. 

There are definite strides in the right direction for never having to use
the installer again, though.  I now understand how the initrd stuff works,
and have a start in puting in prom_initrd stuff. 

The biggest thing we can do to further the project right now is to get
more people onboard with the fewest hassles possible.  Getting a decent
install program is critical to it. initrd (or prom_initrd) is the right
solution to that.

- Alex

Re: Installer changes...

[Francis M. J. Hsieh]

At 01:24 AM 1998/5/19 , you wrote:
>The biggest thing we can do to further the project right now is to get
>more people onboard with the fewest hassles possible.  Getting a decent
>install program is critical to it. initrd (or prom_initrd) is the right
>solution to that.

Can't agree more. The more people we get, the more thing we can do.   :-)

--
--
Francis Meng Juei Hsieh, Life Science Department, NTHU, Taiwan. 
Welcome to Life Science BBS bbs.life.nthu.edu.tw

Re: Installer changes...

[Alistair Lambie]

Alex deVries wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 14 May 1998, Alistair Lambie wrote:
> > It stops right at the file /dev/need_disks_created.  There are a bunch
> > of errors before this.  The /dev/need_disks_created file does not seem
> > to get written to disk correctly....the e2fsck cleans it up by the looks
> > of things.  I guess there is something about the cpio that the installer
> > doesn't like.
> 
> Wow.  I really messed it up badly somehow.
> 
> I suspect it's having a problem writing a file that's 0 bytes long.  Let
> me repackage it, and make the file 1 byte.
> 

No, this is not the problem.  The problem is that the /dev directory is
getting too big for 'installer' to handle.  If I repackage the cpio
after deleting some files from the directory all is well.  Maybe we need
to do a very minimal package of the files in the /dev directory and run
some MAKEDEV's on first boot?

> As we speak, I'm debugging the initrd stuff in the kernel to sort out why
> initial ramdisks don't get loaded.
> 

I think this is the way to go for the future...saves maintaining
installer :-)

Cheers, Alistair

-- 
Alistair Lambie                         alambie@wellington.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics                      SGI Voicemail/VNET: 234-1455
Level 5, Cigna House,                                M/S: INZ-3780
PO Box 24 093,                                  Ph: +64-4-494 6325
40 Mercer St, Wellington,                      Fax: +64-4-494 6321
New Zealand                                 Mobile: +64-21-635 262