Working boot/root

Working boot/root

[David Given]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots 
fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root' 
and press return, it seems to hang.

However, I don't know if this is the current boot/root. Is this a known or a 
fixed problem? If so, can anyone point me at a more recent image I could try?

I also have an unrelated question:

I have an ancient Toshiba laptop, with an 8086 processor an 1MB of memory. I'm 
currently using it as a serial terminal with DOS. I'd like to try something a 
little more sophisticated, and ELKS is a good choice. Unfortunately, it's 
floppy drive is duff and its 20MB hard drive is a laptop-sized MFM disc with 
an interface like nothing on Earth. As I don't want to remove DOS, as I have 
no way of getting it back on, I'd like to shrink the DOS partition to 5MB or 
so and use the rest for ELKS. This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that 
runs on an 8086 and (b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any 
suggestions?

- -- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "USER'S MANUAL VERSION 1.0:  The information
|  dg@cowlark.com    | presented in this publication has been carefully
| (dg@tao-group.com) | for reliability." --- anonymous computer hardware
+- www.cowlark.com --+ manual
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.0 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+Y35Jf9E0noFvlzgRAp4CAJ9gH72qV50ov/tztlUWr4D41hRPnQCgqDt4
RRoqlIG42BQJbH0C6TBW+LU=
=Y2yq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Working boot/root

[Dan Olson]

> I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots
> fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root'
> and press return, it seems to hang.
>
> However, I don't know if this is the current boot/root. Is this a known or a
> fixed problem? If so, can anyone point me at a more recent image I could try?

Have you tried the 720k image or seperate boot/root disks?  I know those
are always updated.

> I have an ancient Toshiba laptop, with an 8086 processor an 1MB of memory.

Cool, I've never seen an 8086 machine with a full meg or ram before!

> no way of getting it back on, I'd like to shrink the DOS partition to 5MB or
> so and use the rest for ELKS. This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that
> runs on an 8086 and (b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any
> suggestions?

There was a DOS program that came on my old Linux cd way back when that
shrunk FAT partitions, might be just what you're after, but I forget the
name.  I suppose there's a chance it had 80286+ code in it too, don't
know.  Maybe Loadlin would work with ELKS, don't know if it would be happy
with a non-Linux kernal.  Maybe you should just replace the floppy, it
might be tough to actually get ELKS stuff to/from the laptop without one.

	Dan

Re: Working boot/root

[Paul Nasrat]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 04:09:45PM +0000, David Given wrote:
> 
> I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots 
> fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root' 
> and press return, it seems to hang.

Hmm, there was an issue with 0.1.1, or one of the pre-releases at some
point.  Can I suggest you try the following:

1) Download EDE which is an installer, this will install elks and seems
to work well.  This also uses a bootloader.

2) Build a kernel from latest cvs, and dd it to a disk, then use the
root disk from your image file.  Let me know if that works.

> I also have an unrelated question:

> This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that 
> runs on an 8086 and 

You might want to try the fips which came with early versions of minix,

http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/CD-ROM-2.0/DOSUTILS/FIPS/

This may work though YMMV.

> (b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any 

Hmm, once you have it shrunk you may want to go straight to EDE which
installs a bootloader (Bootkit) that allows you to load both elks/dos.
There are MS-DOS versions of bootkit to allow you to install.

http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/linux-8086-list/2002/06/1788.html

You may want to experiment with fips then this in Bochs or something
first.

Paul

Re: Working boot/root

[Mark Robson]

> 2) Build a kernel from latest cvs, and dd it to a disk, then use the
> root disk from your image file.  Let me know if that works.

No, that doesn't work.

It does, however, fail in a different way.

On bochs, it causes the screen to go blank when it tries to load init. This 
may be a problem with bochs, or it's doing something screwy which causes 
bochs to blank the screen. On real hardware (yes, I resurrected my XT 
compatible), it fails

sys_execve("/bin/init",args,18) => 65528

and then

panic: Unable to get timer

I don't know if this is right, but is "panic: Unable to get timer" caused by 
the CPU jumping to address 0 and attempting to boot again? (I grepped for 
this string and saw some such comment on the release notes)

All I want is to kernel I can boot off myself; this seems too difficult. It 
may be that my root image is faulty (although it's a stock one), so I may try 
to replace that.

Maybe I can use the combo disc as a root disc?

Mark