is there *any* way to boot IP32 from hard drive ?

is there *any* way to boot IP32 from hard drive ?

[Max Zaitsev]

Hi List,

I've asked the very same question here before, but got no answer. Probably, 
the experts, who might have known the answer just overlooked it... (sorry 
guys for addressing some of you directly, but I'm really in trouble). The 
thing is that I desperately need to get the O2 to boot from its HDD, it's all 
installed and supposed to be used as a standalone box.

I'm using kernel 2.6.6 with minimal patches from Ilya and as to be expected it 
does not boot from the volume header. Arcboot seems to be the way to go, but 
I'm not able to compile the bootable arcboot.IP32 image. When I've tried to 
self-compile it with gcc 3.3.3 the image size was over 500K and it did not do 
anything at all. Self-compilation with gcc 3.4 fails during linking. In a 
mean time I've extracted the binary arcboot.IP32 image from the debian 
package and this one at least does something: it loads the kernel into memory 
(goes very slow), recognises a 64-bit executable and even starts it... But 
immediately after the kernel crashes. Any idea why it could be happening? In 
some other thread, Ilya have mentioned, that he has a "highly hacked" version 
of arcboot. Is it available anywhere? Or are other other solutions?

Thanks in advance,
Max

Re: is there *any* way to boot IP32 from hard drive ?

[Samium Gromoff]

> Hi List,
>
> I've asked the very same question here before, but got no answer. Probably, 
> the experts, who might have known the answer just overlooked it... (sorry 
> guys for addressing some of you directly, but I'm really in trouble). The 
> thing is that I desperately need to get the O2 to boot from its HDD, it'sall 
> installed and supposed to be used as a standalone box.

First -- you`re right to use the arcboot image from debian -- that`s how i got
it working.

Second -- not all kernels will run successfully, indeed -- the one i used was
the glaurung 2.6.1 kernel from:

	http://www.linux-mips.org/~glaurung/

This is the only kernel which worked for me so far, and it is not without it`s
share of flaws, namely -- RTC, framebuffer, the AD-based sound chip and mouse
all having issues. Also it hangs (at times) =)

Hope this helps.

regards, Samium Gromoff