Re: [Xenomai-help] Xenomai not booting on a dell server

[Gilles Chanteperdrix <gilles.chanteperdrix@xenomai.org>]

Saravanan S wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to install xenomai on a Dell Poweredge server (R710).The 
> platform details are given below:
> 
> Two quad Intel(8 cores) Xeon E5506@domain.hid 6,RAM-16
> GB,uses SAS disks through a SAS Host Bus Adapter(HBA).
> 
> Drivers for this HBA only available from fedora 10 onwards.
> 
> So I patched xenomai  2.4.10 with linux 2.6.29.4 with fedora 11 as
> the host OS.I used fedora 11 config file.I made the following changes
> to the config file
> 
> 1.In processor types and features: architecture->Core2/Newer Xeon, 
> subarchitecture->Generic, thermal throttling disabled,HPET support
> enabled
> 
> 2.Power management stopped.

Bad. You should enable ACPI, only CONFIG_ACPI_PROCESSOR should be disabled.

> 
> 3.Support for PCI hotplug disabled.
> 
> 4.MSI,MSI-X disabled.

No reason to do this. If you enable these options and get problems,
please isolate the option which causes a problem and report.

> 
> 5.In real time subsystem all options selected.

Please keep the default settings for a first run, verify that it works,
then enable the options you want (all of them if you want), if it does
not work, then isolate the option which is the cause of the problem.

> 
> 6.SMP support enabled
> 
> 7.MTD support disabled
> 
> 8.All other default options.
> 
> After making and installing the modules ,when i selected the xenomai
> kernel on rebooting it didnt boot at all.There was just a blinking
> cursor on the screen.

Did you rebuild your OS (which is it anyway ?) initramfs/initrd? If you
do the same procedure without activating CONFIG_IPIPE and
CONFIG_XENOMAI, do you get

> 
> I referred to the following documents while installing
> 
> http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/papers/322386.pdf
> 
> http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e0226686/xenomai/xenomai_implementation.pdf<http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/%7Ee0226686/xenomai/xenomai_implementation.pdf>
> 
> 
> http://www.lara.ene.unb.br/~phsantana/files/technotes/HowTo_Debian_Embedded.pdf<http://www.lara.ene.unb.br/%7Ephsantana/files/technotes/HowTo_Debian_Embedded.pdf>

That is fine and even flattering to see that there are paper about
xenomai all around the web and even on intel's site. However, the
website containing authoritative documentation is http://www.xenomai.org
If something is missing there, please ask.

I read the Intel doc for instance, it contains a lot of things which are
a cut and paste of Xenomai documentation, with some added stuff, which
unfortunately is quite erroneous:
- Adeos is not a real-time kernel
- there is no such thing as a list of linux kernels compatibles with a
version of Xenomai, each version of Xenomai aims at being compatible
with each versions of a Linux kernel for which a patch has been issued
at the time of the release. For each architecture, there are several
patches contained in the package, you are insured that linux kernel
patched with these patches compile, and that the one with the highest
linux version has been tested to validate xenomai.
- the list of packages to install in order to be able to install xenomai
is extravagant. The following packages are not needed:
rpm -ivh libgomp-4.1.2-42.el5.i386.rpm (Disk 2)
rpm -ivh elfutils-libs-0.125-3.el5.i386.rpm (Disk 2)
rpm -ivh redhat-rpm-config-8.0.45-24.el5.noarch.rpm (Disk
2)
rpm -ivh ncurses-devel-5.5-24.20060715.i386.rpm (Disk 2)
rpm -ivh elfutils-0.125-3.el5.i386.rpm (Disk 2)
rpm -ivh libstdc++-devel-4.1.2-42.el5.i386.rpm (Disk 2)
rpm -ivh doxygen-1.4.7-1.1.i386.rpm (optional, Disk 2)
rpm -ivh unifdef-1.171-5.fc6.i386.rpm (Disk 3)
rpm -ivh rpm-build-4.4.2-48.el5.i386.rpm (Disk 3)
rpm -ivh emacs-common-21.4-20.el5.i386.rpm (required for
emacs-nox, Disk 3)
rpm -ivh emacs-nox-21.4-20.el5.i386.rpm (optional,
Disk 4)
- when building a linux 2.6 kernel, you do not need to run make clean
before building the kernel, actually, it is a waste of time
- the list of options to disable to run with xenomai is extravagant too:
you should not disable power management, you should enable ACPI, and the
MSI and MSI-X should work
CardBus should work
I suspect Toshiba and Dell laptop support should work
PCI hotplug should work
MTD should work (and actually works on embedded platforms with MTD devices)
Fusion MPT should work
I2O should work
ISDN should work

Anyway, if you have problem when enabling these options, writing a paper
telling the rest of the world to disable them is the wrong approach, any
such issue should be reported on this list.

-- 
Gilles Chanteperdrix, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com