Re: Booting from DOC2000 with GRUB loader

Nikhil Goel
2002-05-01T19:48:30Z

From the commands pondered upon -

nftl_format /dev/mtd0 98304

works fine for me in a similar setup. The same was given as a reference,
the first time the grub and DOC2000 patch showed up.

John Sutton wrote:
> Hi all (and Russ in particular)
>
> I've got the same problem as previous post on this subject:
>
> ---------------------------------------
> On Thu, 2002-04-25 at 19:19, Zhiwei Yu wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am working on booting from DOC2000, LILO works on my
>>box but GRUB doesn't. After I patched the latest
>>patch for GRUB, I got grub-fireware and sucessfully
>>load the fireware in DOC.
>>
>>For now, everytime I boot up, I got grub prompt, but I
>>failed to load kernel, the command I using is
>>kernel (dc0,0)/boot/bzImage.
>>
>>This problem is not new to the list, I found several
>>similar mails, All of them didn't have the answer. DI
>>u have any idea? Thanks in advance.
>
>
> probably because you overwrote some nftl stuff with grub. Erase the
> whole thing (eraseall /dev/mtd0), put grub on it, find the next free
> block directly past grub and nftl_format at that offset. fdisk your
> nftla, mkfs the partition, add the kernel, and maybe a menu.lst.
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> My question is: *how* do I "find the next free block directly past grub"?
>
> When I put grub on there (not at that stage realising I was going to trash my
> existing nftl partitions and so I omitted to record the output), I *seem to*
> recall that doc_loadbios reported needing 6 x 16k "blocks" to store the grub
> firmware - which fits, because the grub_firmware file is 87k.
>
> So, in what units is the <start offset> argument to nftl_format? i.e. do I do :
>
> nftl_format /dev/mtd0 6 (16k blocks)
>
> or nftl_format /dev/mtd0 96 (1k blocks)
>
> or nftl_format /dev/mtd0 98304 (bytes)
>
> etc...?
>
> I'm nervous about messing this up because since I put grub on the DoC, the
> machine only ever boots from the DoC - completely ignores floppy, scsi disks
> and cdrom. So if I screw up this nftl_format and trash grub, I'm going to end
> up with an unbootable system ;-( (OK, I'll just have to pull the DoC chip out
> of the board *again*, but even this gives me the eebies, so tight is the damn
> thing stuck in its socket! And anyway, if the system is unbootable with the
> DoC chip in there, how am I ever going to reprogram it?)
>
> Help much appreciated!
>
> TIA
> John
>
> ***************************************************
> John Sutton
> SCL Internet
> URL http://www.scl.co.uk/
> Tel. +44 (0) 1239 711 888
> ***************************************************
>
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