Re: IDE Problem with old Gateway laptop -SOLVED

[Declan Moriarty <declan.moriarty@iol.ie>]

On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 17:58 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > 	kjournald starting Commit interval 5 seconds
> > 	VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly
> > 	Freeing unused kernel memory: 168k freed
> > (keyboard still echoed onscreen, disk parked)
> > 
> > Adding init=/bin/bash is no better.
> 
> So its the user space which is broken. Make sure the user space has the
> right /dev etc - and is for the right CPU - a 200MHz pentium means you
> need i386 or i586 binaries. i686/athlon binaries would produce the effect
> you report.

Remember this? The problem appears to have been uClibc-0.9.29.

Dropping the system to uClibc-0.9.28.3 and building the minimum as a
proof of concept, I'm running with init=/bin/bash. This is using the
same 2 kernels, one compiled under uClibc-0.9.29, and one under glibc
(not installed there) which seems to indicate that the kernel is fairly
libc independent. I have both systems on that laptop currently.
Hda3(with uClibc-0.9.28.3) boots whereas the same system on hda4
(uClibc-0.9.29)does not.

It's actually quite audible whether it works or not, as you barely hear
the hard disk on the dodgy one at all, while the good one gives it a
thrashing before coming up with. It's either that libc or some i686 code
sneaked through to the old pentium. If I knew a handy way to check that,
I'd do for it.


-- 
        With Best Regards,

        Declan Moriarty