lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[Andrey Glazunov]

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i have a problem with booting lrp from PC-Flash drive card...
i will try to explain : card with 2Mb of flash EEPROM from M-Systems it appear as HardDrive with msdos filesystem and can boot as msdos drive well ... so i use syslinux to create linux 'boot sector' on it and copy all files from lrp diskette (except syslinux.sys) and correct boot=/dev/hda1 at syslinux.cfg (as it need to boot lrp from harddrive).
Now the problem - system start sucessfully  and load root.lrp............. (OK)
then load 
linux..(hang :(   ) - 2 dots and full-hang - no ctrl-alt-del only reset...
when i try to load from diskette (PC-Flash drive card inserted) it loads good - i think at least no conflicts with linux code and 'flash-drive' code (it takes about 20...40 kb of conventional memory when initialise itself)... good...

the main question - i need only boot from this flash card but not use it as hardrive (drive),  are there any ideas how to prevent system's hang ? may be create some 'additional ramdrive' and copy there all .lrp files with kernel and then load from it ? does it mean i need to modify syslinux for it ?
i see some patches for 2.2.16 kernel - can they help me or i use extremely old flash card and these patches are only for DOC2000 and newer ?

thanx for any help.

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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[David Woodhouse]

lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> the main question - i need only boot from this flash card but not use
> it as hardrive (drive),  are there any ideas how to prevent system's
> hang ?

I think it's probably hanging because the built-in BIOS extension takes up 
too much memory. Can you try a newer version of SYSLINUX or using loadlin 
instead?

The kernel patches won't help you get it booting, but you may to be able to
use the flash card from within Linux - it was the first device ever
supported by the MTD code, although I had a 4MiB version. If the bitrot
hasn't got to it yet, try doc1000.c - you may need to hardcode the size of
the device and the physical location at which it's found.

You'll also want to enable FTL (not NFTL). 

--
dwmw2




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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[Andrey Glazunov]

>
> lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> > the main question - i need only boot from this flash card but not use
> > it as hardrive (drive),  are there any ideas how to prevent system's
> > hang ?
>
> I think it's probably hanging because the built-in BIOS extension takes up
> too much memory. Can you try a newer version of SYSLINUX or using loadlin
> instead?

i told about my experiment - i  boot from 1.44floppy with this ISA card
inserted to check if any conflicts with BIOS extensions and any linux code -
system boots OK ... is it good experiment ? as about memory - when this card
was 'formatted' with 8192 parameter of firmware (to support up to 32Mb
drives) syslinux says 'You have less than 604kb of memory and can have
problems ...' but it was 1.48 syslinux from original lrp package... 1.50
that reqire only >=512kb says nothing... some time later i have 'reformat'
this drive using 2048 parameter of firmware (to support up to 4Mb drives) -
it help to get 'additional' ~200kb of drivespace (from 1.6Mb up to 1.8Mb)
and decrease amount of taken off conventional memory - today even 1.48
syslinux says nothing warnings at time of booting (from floppy when card is
inserted or from card itself but hanging)

> The kernel patches won't help you get it booting, but you may to be able
to
> use the flash card from within Linux - it was the first device ever
> supported by the MTD code, although I had a 4MiB version. If the bitrot
> hasn't got to it yet, try doc1000.c - you may need to hardcode the size of
> the device and the physical location at which it's found.

what is 'bitrot' ? and where can i found doc1000.c ? can it help to boot
(prevent hanging at 'loading linux..' ) or just help to acess this device
from already started linux (from floppy for example...) ?

> You'll also want to enable FTL (not NFTL).

i will try to found what is it :|

Thanx for quick reply

-Andrey



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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[David Woodhouse]

lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> i told about my experiment - i  boot from 1.44floppy with this ISA
> card inserted to check if any conflicts with BIOS extensions and any
> linux code - system boots OK ... is it good experiment ? 

Er... yes, that's a good experiment. Sorry, I'd missed that. The low-memory 
explanation doesn't really hold then. Can you boot from a floppy and load 
the kernel from the flash card?


lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
>  what is 'bitrot' ? 

The process whereby old code which hasn't been touched for a long time just 
seems to stop working. 

> and where can i found doc1000.c ? 

In the Linux 2.4 kernel: linux/drivers/mtd/doc1000.c. Or from my CVS tree 
if you want to patch it into 2.2.



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dwmw2




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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[Andrey Glazunov]

>
> lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> > i told about my experiment - i  boot from 1.44floppy with this ISA
> > card inserted to check if any conflicts with BIOS extensions and any
> > linux code - system boots OK ... is it good experiment ?
>
> Er... yes, that's a good experiment. Sorry, I'd missed that. The
low-memory
> explanation doesn't really hold then. Can you boot from a floppy and load
> the kernel from the flash card?
>

hm... how can i do it ?  something like boot=/dev/hda1 in syslinux.cfg at
floppy ? as i see linux software do not understand this 'device' as /hda1
  ...
and as for booting from flash - system loads root.lrp well and hangs at time
of 'loading linux..'  so it seems like some critical errors in kernel (if i
understand it right) when it try to acsess boot device during its
initialising (loading)... it seems only kernel patches can help...
>
> lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> >  what is 'bitrot' ?
>
> The process whereby old code which hasn't been touched for a long time
just
> seems to stop working.

hmm... i will try to understand it but i am too poor in linux yet :(

>
> > and where can i found doc1000.c ?
>
> In the Linux 2.4 kernel: linux/drivers/mtd/doc1000.c. Or from my CVS tree
> if you want to patch it into 2.2.
>

i better try to work with 2.2 kernels as stable releases (IMHO)... all i
want to do is to build small PPTP server with 1 network card to 'mirror'
game traffic in the internet (now it work on WinNT4 but i want it to be
linux without 500Mb HDD and 64Mb RAM) ... so i will better look into
patches... unfortunately i want to boot all system from flash card without
floppy or hdd... in other case there is no advantages of flash...

Andrey.



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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[Andrey Glazunov]

> lhfrjgtn@peterlink.ru said:
> > i told about my experiment - i  boot from 1.44floppy with this ISA
> > card inserted to check if any conflicts with BIOS extensions and any
> > linux code - system boots OK ... is it good experiment ?
>
> Er... yes, that's a good experiment. Sorry, I'd missed that. The
low-memory
> explanation doesn't really hold then. Can you boot from a floppy and load
> the kernel from the flash card?

well ... it seems i suddenly find horrible bug in thats system (mainboard
BIOS as i think) - it _can_not_ boot kernel from IDE HDD, non-standart
floppy (1680kb) and my ISA flash card too :|  just hangs at 'Loading
kernel..' ...
well ... i just solve that problem with booting LRP from 1.44 'standart'
floppy and small HDD for modules...
i try to boot from my flash card at another PII motherboard - it loads
kernel ok ! but really can not load any modules after it :| (not hangs ...
just wrote errors loading modules and wait for run-level input)
so i need to patch kernel is not it ?
>
> In the Linux 2.4 kernel: linux/drivers/mtd/doc1000.c. Or from my CVS tree
> if you want to patch it into 2.2.
>

is it mtd-20000704.diff files from http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org  the
only patch i need or some else ? does it adds support for my old enough ISA
flash card to 2.2.16 kernel or i have no chances to load modules from it
after succesful loading kernel ?

-Andrey




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Re: lrp booting from M-Systems ISA flash card

[David Woodhouse]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Andrey Glazunov wrote:

> is it mtd-20000704.diff files from http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org  the
> only patch i need or some else ? does it adds support for my old enough ISA
> flash card to 2.2.16 kernel or i have no chances to load modules from it
> after succesful loading kernel ?

Get the latest from the CVS tree. Don't use that old patch. Instructions
on getting the CVS tree are on the same web page. There are patches to
apply to the 2.2 kernels to set up the Makefiles etc., and then you drop
the .c and .h files from CVS into the kernel tree.

-- 
dwmw2




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