Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

[Gabriel Paubert]

[Sorry for the other readers, part of this message is in French, but Loic
found the most serious problem in the new preploader. I have also added
all the people who have been interested in this at one time or another,
including the last discussion about MILO like things.]

On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Loic Prylli wrote:

> 
> 
> Youpi, j'ai enfin reussi a utiliser preploader !! :-)

Great.

[snipped]

[Loic explaining how he found the bug, and the patch he used, which
unfortunately would not work on a 601]

> En fait ma question originale n'etait pas sur la MMU dans la partie
> principale de preploader, mais dans les dernieres instructions apres le
> decompress_kernel, et dans le code initial du noyau, la ou le plantage
> survient. Je me suis fait une fonction serial_putc qui:
>  - active la MMU si elle ne l'est pas avec un mapping de base
>  - rajoute une entree dans les BAT si la MMU est activee mais la
>  zone PCI/IO non configuree
> 
> Cela m'a permis de localiser le probleme en faisant  des sorties
> series a intervalles reguliers: il y avait un plantage dans le memcpy
> qui recopie le residual dans arch/ppc/kernel/setup.c, ceci parce que le
> residual etait a la fin des 64Mo de memoire alors que dans sa premier
> phase de bootstrap le noyau ne mappe que les premiers 4Mo, le probleme 
> est resolu en changeant arch/ppc/kernel/head.S pour mapper
> initialement le maximum,  c'est a dire 256 Mo de memoire:
> 
> RCS file: /cvsroot/linux/arch/ppc/kernel/head.S,v
> retrieving revision 1.112
> diff -u -r1.112 head.S
> --- head.S      1998/11/15 19:49:18     1.112
> +++ head.S      1998/12/10 17:36:01
> @@ -237,7 +258,7 @@
>         b       5f
>  4:
>  #ifndef CONFIG_APUS
> -       ori     r11,r11,0x1fe           /* set up BAT registers for 604 */
> +       ori     r11,r11,0x1ffe          /* set up BAT registers for 604 */
>         li      r8,2                    /* R/W access */
>  #else
>         ori     r11,r11,0xfe            /* set up an 8MB mapping */
> 
> 
> Le probleme ne se posait pas avec le boot par defaut parce que celui
> recopiait le residual au debut de la memoire avant de lancer le noyau.

Indeed, I did not experience any problem because I do all my developments
on a poor 16Mb machine. You'll find a new version of the preploader at the
usual site: 

	ftp://vcorr1.iram.es/pub/preploader.tgz

ands the corresponding 2.1.130 zImage with builtin de4x5 and ncr53c8xx
drivers (ext2 and nfs filesystems but no root on NFS). This kernel also
includes support for OpenPIC on Raven machines.

I would like to have as many reports as possible, both from failures and
successes. 

There is also a problem which bothers me because I simply can't understand
how some people do not get a boot prompt for kernel parameters. I have
never encountered this problem and absolutely need to track it down.

What is preploader (and how does it compare to MILO):

- it is an attempt at a clean linux loader for Linux/PPC on PreP machines
(might be extended to other machines too).

- it configures PCI resources in a saner way than most firmware (I/O and
memory mapped regions), I needed this to work around bugs in some S3
boards (there is a blakclist with one entry now, but it could and should
be extended).  However it does not yet support PCI<->PCI bridges, I would
need the help of somebody with a such a beast with some actual devices
plugged-in (any MCP750 with additional CompactPCI boards for example). 

- it includes an x86 emulator which allows me to properly initialize my S3
board.

- if no graphics adapter is detected or the keyboard is disconnected, it
automatically falls back to serial console (at least it should). 

What's new in this version:

- problems with memory > 16Mb should be solved

- the makefile has been improved and should work right out of the box

- by default the -DEBUG flag is set in the makefile and it will spit out
a lot of info about PCI mappings and some relocation information. 

- it needs to shuffle much more data around to work with the weirdest
possible memory maps (it should correctly handle any combination of
residual data and load addresses), so don't be surprised if it takes a
full 10-20ms more to boot than the preceding version ;-) 

Future plans (if Cort agrees):

- if I have enough success reports, I plan to include it in an
arch/ppc/prepboot directory so that it can become part of the general
linux-kernel archives (at least at vger for now). For this step I will
need the help of some makefile gurus, I'm unfortunately completely
hermetic to makefile concepts and syntax, and experience has shown that it
takes me more time to debug a makefile of 50 lines than 5000 lines of PPC
assembly. 

  
How to use it:

- unpack preploader.tgz in any directory (it will create a preploader
subdirectory). Then 'cd preploader; make' should take your
/usr.src/linux/vmlinux file and pack it into a zImage suitable for
booting.  

- warning: you need binutils>=2.9.1.0.13

May I insist again that both *success* and *failure* reports are very
important. They should include all possible details on the HW, as well as
the console logs if the loader gets to the point of spitting out any
information.

	Regards,
	Gabriel.


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Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

[Matt Porter]

On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Gabriel Paubert wrote:

> usual site: 
> 
> 	ftp://vcorr1.iram.es/pub/preploader.tgz
> 
> ands the corresponding 2.1.130 zImage with builtin de4x5 and ncr53c8xx
> drivers (ext2 and nfs filesystems but no root on NFS). This kernel also
> includes support for OpenPIC on Raven machines.
> 
> I would like to have as many reports as possible, both from failures and
> successes. 

Ok, here is my success report:

Tested on MVME230x,2300SC,2400,260x,2700, and 3600 as well as MTX.
Everything appears to be detected properly as with my hacked version of
the arch/ppc/boot/ code. I didn't bother trying to root to something since
that should work as before.

I'm including two patches which provide for some general cleanup, cross
compilation support, and inclusion into the arch/ppc/ tree.  The first
patch to arch/ppc/Makefile enables building in the arch/ppc/prepboot
directory.  The second patch is to be applied to the current
preploader.tgz and then the resultant directory should be placed in
arch/ppc/ and name 'prepboot'.  Doing the usual build routine will then
also build a zImage with the alternative prep loader.

This should not break anything to put the alternative prep loader into CVS
so if Cort is happy with this then I can provide one diff versus current
CVS to make inclusion easy.

Oh, and I've made a local copy of preploader.tgz available at
http://members.home.net/mmporter/linux.html for anyone else in the
states that might have the same kind of bandwidth problems I had going to
Gabriel's ftp server (took me 30+ minutes to get the 90k file).

...patches follow...

--- linux.orig/arch/ppc/Makefile	Tue Dec 15 11:02:20 1998
+++ linux/arch/ppc/Makefile	Tue Dec 15 11:08:09 1998
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
 MAKEBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/boot
 MAKECOFFBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/coffboot
 MAKECHRPBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/chrpboot
+MAKEPREPBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/prepboot
 
 ifdef CONFIG_8xx
 SUBDIRS += arch/ppc/8xx_io
@@ -67,6 +68,7 @@
 	@$(MAKECOFFBOOT) $@
 	@$(MAKEBOOT) $@
 	@$(MAKECHRPBOOT) $@
+	@$(MAKEPREPBOOT) $@
 
 pmac_config:
 	rm -f .config arch/ppc/defconfig
@@ -100,6 +102,7 @@
 	@$(MAKECOFFBOOT) clean
 	@$(MAKEBOOT) clean
 	@$(MAKECHRPBOOT) clean
+	@$(MAKEPREPBOOT) clean
 
 archmrproper:

....preploader patch....

diff -urN preploader/Makefile prepboot/Makefile
--- preploader/Makefile	Mon Dec 14 09:06:15 1998
+++ prepboot/Makefile	Tue Dec 15 12:56:10 1998
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 #
-# arch/ppc/boot/Makefile
+# arch/ppc/prepboot/Makefile
 #
 # This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public
 # License.  See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive
@@ -10,12 +10,10 @@
 # modified by Cort (cort@cs.nmt.edu)
 # revised for PreP boot by Gabriel Paubert (paubert@iram.es)
 
-
 # I tried to use r2 for the basic structure but it seems to be incompatible
 # with the -m relocatable option.
-INCPATH		= /usr/src/linux/arch/ppc/boot
+
 ASFLAGS		= -mrelocatable
-CFLAGSINC	= -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux/include -D__powerpc__
 CFLAGS		:= $(CFLAGS) -D__powerpc__ -msoft-float -pipe \
 		-fno-builtin -Wall -mmultiple -mstring -I$(INCPATH)\
 		-D__KERNEL__ -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer \
@@ -60,20 +58,23 @@
 #OBJECTS += vreset.o kbd.o
 
 zImage: $(OBJECTS) $(IMAGES) $(SIZES) ppcboot.lds
-	ld -o zImage $(OBJECTS) -b binary $(IMAGES) -T ppcboot.lds \
-	--defsym _vmlinux_size=`cut -f 1 <.vmlinux.size` -Map zImage.map
+	$(CROSS_COMPILE)ld -o zImage $(OBJECTS) -b binary $(IMAGES) \
+	-T ppcboot.lds --defsym _vmlinux_size=`cut -f 1 <.vmlinux.size` \
+	-Map zImage.map
 
 # The 2 objcopy are quite ugly, but for now it was the simplest solution
 # since the flags to expand the bss do not work on a binary output format.
 # It would be better to know where the bss is and clear it in the bootloader,
 # but the resulting vmlinux.gz expansion is  257 bytes, so it's not so bad.
-vmlinux.gz .vmlinux.size: /usr/src/linux/vmlinux
-	objcopy /usr/src/linux/vmlinux -S vmlinux -R .comment \
-		--set-section-flags=.bss=alloc,load,data
-	objcopy vmlinux vmlinux -O binary
+vmlinux.gz .vmlinux.size: /usr/local/src/ppc/linux/vmlinux
+	$(CROSS_COMPILE)objcopy /usr/local/src/ppc/linux/vmlinux -S vmlinux \
+	-R .comment --set-section-flags=.bss=alloc,load,data
+	$(CROSS_COMPILE)objcopy vmlinux vmlinux -O binary
 	du --bytes vmlinux >.vmlinux.size
 	gzip -vf9 vmlinux
 
 .depend dep:
 	$(CPP) -M *.S *.c -I$(INCPATH) > .depend
 
+clean:
+	rm -f *.o vmlinux* zImage*
diff -urN preploader/zlib.c prepboot/zlib.c
--- preploader/zlib.c	Tue Sep  1 04:49:30 1998
+++ prepboot/zlib.c	Tue Dec 15 12:56:10 1998
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@
 
          /* functions */
 
-#include <string.h>
+#include <linux/string.h>
 #define zmemcpy memcpy
 #define zmemzero(dest, len)	memset(dest, 0, len)

--
Matt Porter
mmporter@home.com
Unix is a Linux-like operating system.


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Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

[Gabriel Paubert]

On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Matt Porter wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Gabriel Paubert wrote:
> 
> > usual site: 
> > 
> > 	ftp://vcorr1.iram.es/pub/preploader.tgz
> > 
> > ands the corresponding 2.1.130 zImage with builtin de4x5 and ncr53c8xx
> > drivers (ext2 and nfs filesystems but no root on NFS). This kernel also
> > includes support for OpenPIC on Raven machines.
> > 
> > I would like to have as many reports as possible, both from failures and
> > successes. 
> 
> Ok, here is my success report:
> 
> Tested on MVME230x,2300SC,2400,260x,2700, and 3600 as well as MTX.
> Everything appears to be detected properly as with my hacked version of
> the arch/ppc/boot/ code. I didn't bother trying to root to something since
> that should work as before.

Wow, MVME people are going to be happy. Did you try both net and disk
boots or only net ? 

Do you have any lspci -vvx output. I would also like people to test the
zImage on MVME 2700 to see it interrupts work (and cat /proc/interrupts as
a proof). 

> I'm including two patches which provide for some general cleanup, cross
> compilation support, and inclusion into the arch/ppc/ tree.  The first
> patch to arch/ppc/Makefile enables building in the arch/ppc/prepboot
> directory.  The second patch is to be applied to the current
> preploader.tgz and then the resultant directory should be placed in
> arch/ppc/ and name 'prepboot'.  Doing the usual build routine will then
> also build a zImage with the alternative prep loader.

Thanks, from a Makefile-impaired hacker.
 
> This should not break anything to put the alternative prep loader into CVS
> so if Cort is happy with this then I can provide one diff versus current
> CVS to make inclusion easy.

I leave this up to Cort. 

> Oh, and I've made a local copy of preploader.tgz available at
> http://members.home.net/mmporter/linux.html for anyone else in the
> states that might have the same kind of bandwidth problems I had going to
> Gabriel's ftp server (took me 30+ minutes to get the 90k file).

Not surprising, 3k/min is still 50 bytes/s. Still high by local standards
where surfing the web (U.S. sites) at anything higher than 20 bytes/second
can be qualified as an exhilarating experience :-(

[snipped]
> --
> Matt Porter
> mmporter@home.com
> Unix is a Linux-like operating system.

Indeed... ;-)

	Regards,
	Gabriel.


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Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

[Alois Fertl]

I have successfully booted the following systems using the preploader 
and a selfcompiled 2.1.130 kernel:
   RiscPC 603 66MHz
   RiscPC 604 133MHz
   RiscPC Plus 604 133MHz
All onboard PCI devices are detected and configured.


> 
> Subject: Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)
> Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 13:42:18 -0700 (MST)
> From: Matt Porter <mmporter@home.com>
> To: Gabriel Paubert <paubert@iram.es>
> CC: Loic Prylli <Loic.Prylli@ens-lyon.fr>, linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org,
>      "Eugene V. Ananishnov" <eugene-a@fort.tatarstan.ru>,
>      VALETTE Eric <valette@crf.canon.fr>,
>      Cort Dougan <cort@ladron.cs.nmt.edu>, minyard@acm.org,
>      baccala@freesoft.org,
>      Alois Fertl <alois_fertl@muenchen.europe.mcd.mot.com>,
>      Peter De Schrijver <p2@medelec.uia.ac.be>,
>      Geert Uytterhoeven <Geert.Uytterhoeven@cs.kuleuven.ac.be>
> 
> On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Gabriel Paubert wrote:
> 
> > usual site:
> >
> >       ftp://vcorr1.iram.es/pub/preploader.tgz
> >
> > ands the corresponding 2.1.130 zImage with builtin de4x5 and ncr53c8xx
> > drivers (ext2 and nfs filesystems but no root on NFS). This kernel also
> > includes support for OpenPIC on Raven machines.
> >
> > I would like to have as many reports as possible, both from failures and
> > successes.
> 
> Ok, here is my success report:
> 
> Tested on MVME230x,2300SC,2400,260x,2700, and 3600 as well as MTX.
> Everything appears to be detected properly as with my hacked version of
> the arch/ppc/boot/ code. I didn't bother trying to root to something since
> that should work as before.
> 
> I'm including two patches which provide for some general cleanup, cross
> compilation support, and inclusion into the arch/ppc/ tree.  The first
> patch to arch/ppc/Makefile enables building in the arch/ppc/prepboot
> directory.  The second patch is to be applied to the current
> preploader.tgz and then the resultant directory should be placed in
> arch/ppc/ and name 'prepboot'.  Doing the usual build routine will then
> also build a zImage with the alternative prep loader.
> 
> This should not break anything to put the alternative prep loader into CVS
> so if Cort is happy with this then I can provide one diff versus current
> CVS to make inclusion easy.
> 
> Oh, and I've made a local copy of preploader.tgz available at
> http://members.home.net/mmporter/linux.html for anyone else in the
> states that might have the same kind of bandwidth problems I had going to
> Gabriel's ftp server (took me 30+ minutes to get the 90k file).
> 
> ...patches follow...
> 
> --- linux.orig/arch/ppc/Makefile        Tue Dec 15 11:02:20 1998
> +++ linux/arch/ppc/Makefile     Tue Dec 15 11:08:09 1998
> @@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
>  MAKEBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/boot
>  MAKECOFFBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/coffboot
>  MAKECHRPBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/chrpboot
> +MAKEPREPBOOT = $(MAKE) -C arch/$(ARCH)/prepboot
> 
>  ifdef CONFIG_8xx
>  SUBDIRS += arch/ppc/8xx_io
> @@ -67,6 +68,7 @@
>         @$(MAKECOFFBOOT) $@
>         @$(MAKEBOOT) $@
>         @$(MAKECHRPBOOT) $@
> +       @$(MAKEPREPBOOT) $@
> 
>  pmac_config:
>         rm -f .config arch/ppc/defconfig
> @@ -100,6 +102,7 @@
>         @$(MAKECOFFBOOT) clean
>         @$(MAKEBOOT) clean
>         @$(MAKECHRPBOOT) clean
> +       @$(MAKEPREPBOOT) clean
> 
>  archmrproper:
> 
> ....preploader patch....
> 
> diff -urN preploader/Makefile prepboot/Makefile
> --- preploader/Makefile Mon Dec 14 09:06:15 1998
> +++ prepboot/Makefile   Tue Dec 15 12:56:10 1998
> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
>  #
> -# arch/ppc/boot/Makefile
> +# arch/ppc/prepboot/Makefile
>  #
>  # This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public
>  # License.  See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive
> @@ -10,12 +10,10 @@
>  # modified by Cort (cort@cs.nmt.edu)
>  # revised for PreP boot by Gabriel Paubert (paubert@iram.es)
> 
> -
>  # I tried to use r2 for the basic structure but it seems to be incompatible
>  # with the -m relocatable option.
> -INCPATH                = /usr/src/linux/arch/ppc/boot
> +
>  ASFLAGS                = -mrelocatable
> -CFLAGSINC      = -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux/include -D__powerpc__
>  CFLAGS         := $(CFLAGS) -D__powerpc__ -msoft-float -pipe \
>                 -fno-builtin -Wall -mmultiple -mstring -I$(INCPATH)\
>                 -D__KERNEL__ -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer \
> @@ -60,20 +58,23 @@
>  #OBJECTS += vreset.o kbd.o
> 
>  zImage: $(OBJECTS) $(IMAGES) $(SIZES) ppcboot.lds
> -       ld -o zImage $(OBJECTS) -b binary $(IMAGES) -T ppcboot.lds \
> -       --defsym _vmlinux_size=`cut -f 1 <.vmlinux.size` -Map zImage.map
> +       $(CROSS_COMPILE)ld -o zImage $(OBJECTS) -b binary $(IMAGES) \
> +       -T ppcboot.lds --defsym _vmlinux_size=`cut -f 1 <.vmlinux.size` \
> +       -Map zImage.map
> 
>  # The 2 objcopy are quite ugly, but for now it was the simplest solution
>  # since the flags to expand the bss do not work on a binary output format.
>  # It would be better to know where the bss is and clear it in the bootloader,
>  # but the resulting vmlinux.gz expansion is  257 bytes, so it's not so bad.
> -vmlinux.gz .vmlinux.size: /usr/src/linux/vmlinux
> -       objcopy /usr/src/linux/vmlinux -S vmlinux -R .comment \
> -               --set-section-flags=.bss=alloc,load,data
> -       objcopy vmlinux vmlinux -O binary
> +vmlinux.gz .vmlinux.size: /usr/local/src/ppc/linux/vmlinux
> +       $(CROSS_COMPILE)objcopy /usr/local/src/ppc/linux/vmlinux -S vmlinux \
> +       -R .comment --set-section-flags=.bss=alloc,load,data
> +       $(CROSS_COMPILE)objcopy vmlinux vmlinux -O binary
>         du --bytes vmlinux >.vmlinux.size
>         gzip -vf9 vmlinux
> 
>  .depend dep:
>         $(CPP) -M *.S *.c -I$(INCPATH) > .depend
> 
> +clean:
> +       rm -f *.o vmlinux* zImage*
> diff -urN preploader/zlib.c prepboot/zlib.c
> --- preploader/zlib.c   Tue Sep  1 04:49:30 1998
> +++ prepboot/zlib.c     Tue Dec 15 12:56:10 1998
> @@ -80,7 +80,7 @@
> 
>           /* functions */
> 
> -#include <string.h>
> +#include <linux/string.h>
>  #define zmemcpy memcpy
>  #define zmemzero(dest, len)    memset(dest, 0, len)
> 
> --
> Matt Porter
> mmporter@home.com
> Unix is a Linux-like operating system.



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Re: preploader (re:Linux-2.1.129 boot on MCP750)

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, Alois Fertl wrote:

> 
> I have successfully booted the following systems using the preploader 
> and a selfcompiled 2.1.130 kernel:
>    RiscPC 603 66MHz
>    RiscPC 604 133MHz
>    RiscPC Plus 604 133MHz
> All onboard PCI devices are detected and configured.
> 
Are these Motorola Boards? I have a 604/133 which I believe to be a
BlackHawk board, with on-board Cirrus logic chip, and the preploader
screws up the video display and doesnt' boot. (This was with Gabiel's
version.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Troy Benjegerdes    |       troy@microux.com     |    hozer@drgw.net   |
|    Unix is user friendly... You just have to be friendly to it first.  |
| This message composed with 100% free software.    http://www.gnu.org   |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


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