ppc initrd problem?

ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386

  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

the symptoms are:

* it starts booting fine
* it finds and uncomresses the initrd into the ramdisk fine too
* it mounts it as root fine too
* it starts init
* init tries to run the rc shell script and this results in bash
  failing to load it's shared libs (it fails on libreadline which
  is the first): it says something about incorrect ELF header -
  but the files in the initrd are ok and all should be there (the
  libs, ld.so and i even ran ldconfig on it)

i have no real idea what happens here - as said - the same thing
works fine in the i386 case ... ok some more details:

* yaboot.conf

  image = vmlinux-2.4.1-XFS
      label = miniroot
      append = "ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1"
      initrd = miniroot.gz
      root = /dev/ram

* the initrd is created with:

  mkdir -p /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/miniroot bs=1024k count=32
  mke2fs -N 32768 /tmp/miniroot
  mount -o loop /tmp/miniroot /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  tar cSlf - `cat /root/miniroot/files.70` | tar xSpf -
  tar xSpzf /root/miniroot/miniroot-add.tgz
  ldconfig -r /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd ..
  umount /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cat /tmp/miniroot | gzip -9 > /root/miniroot.gz
  rmdir /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  rm -i /tmp/miniroot

* the filelist is (excluding stuff not mattering here, all files are
from SuSE 7.0/ppc):

/lib/ld-2.1.3.so
/lib/ld.so.1 (-> /lib/ld-2.1.3.so)
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/libpam.so.0.72
/lib/libpam_misc.so.0.72
/lib/libdl.so.2
/lib/libcrypt.so.1
/lib/librt.so.1
/lib/libresolv.so.2
/lib/libutil.so.1
/lib/libpthread.so.0
/lib/security/*
/lib/libnsl.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.2
/lib/libreadline.so.4.1
/lib/libhistory.so.4.1
/lib/libncurses.so.5.0
/bin/bash
/bin/sh (-> /bin/bash)
/sbin/init
/etc/fstab
/etc/inittab
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/rc
/etc/issue
/etc/shadow
/etc/gshadow
/etc/securetty
/etc/pwdb.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/termcap
...

plus all an "ldconfig -r /destdir" creates on a destdir mounted
system ... chrooting into the mounted system works fine and all
the shared libs kann be resolved fine with the chrooted system
and i can run all the bins in it - but on bootup it does not
work

any idea?

a lot of thanks in advance

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

ok - track it down a bit better:

* it looks like the initrd filesystem gets trashed somehow
* i was able to add a /bin/ash.static to it and boot into
  it using "init=/bin/ash.static" - there some files were
  ok but others resulted in ext2 errors - also the whole
  /sbin dir was trashed which results in the mysterious
  init shared lib problems i saw)
* the image used is ok (tried it via loopback mount and via
  ramdisk in a normal boot with the same kernel - both are
  ok - but then used for booting i get the corruption)
* with certain images (for instance the same with all the
  32768 replaced by 28672 in the creation process) the
  kernel completely hangs after the "found compressed ram-
  disk ..." line

does anyone have an idea here?

anybody else used big initrd's on the ppc?

again - a lot of thanks in advance

t

Thomas Graichen <news-innominate.list.linux.ppc.dev@innominate.de> wrote:

> is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

> i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
> working on the ppc like i did for the i386

>   http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

> to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
> comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
> mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

> the symptoms are:

> * it starts booting fine
> * it finds and uncomresses the initrd into the ramdisk fine too
> * it mounts it as root fine too
> * it starts init
> * init tries to run the rc shell script and this results in bash
>   failing to load it's shared libs (it fails on libreadline which
>   is the first): it says something about incorrect ELF header -
>   but the files in the initrd are ok and all should be there (the
>   libs, ld.so and i even ran ldconfig on it)

> i have no real idea what happens here - as said - the same thing
> works fine in the i386 case ... ok some more details:

> * yaboot.conf

>   image = vmlinux-2.4.1-XFS
>       label = miniroot
>       append = "ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1"
>       initrd = miniroot.gz
>       root = /dev/ram

> * the initrd is created with:

>   mkdir -p /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/miniroot bs=1024k count=32
>   mke2fs -N 32768 /tmp/miniroot
>   mount -o loop /tmp/miniroot /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   cd /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   tar cSlf - `cat /root/miniroot/files.70` | tar xSpf -
>   tar xSpzf /root/miniroot/miniroot-add.tgz
>   ldconfig -r /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   cd ..
>   umount /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   cat /tmp/miniroot | gzip -9 > /root/miniroot.gz
>   rmdir /tmp/miniroot-mnt
>   rm -i /tmp/miniroot

> * the filelist is (excluding stuff not mattering here, all files are
> from SuSE 7.0/ppc):

> /lib/ld-2.1.3.so
> /lib/ld.so.1 (-> /lib/ld-2.1.3.so)
> /lib/libc.so.6
> /lib/libpam.so.0.72
> /lib/libpam_misc.so.0.72
> /lib/libdl.so.2
> /lib/libcrypt.so.1
> /lib/librt.so.1
> /lib/libresolv.so.2
> /lib/libutil.so.1
> /lib/libpthread.so.0
> /lib/security/*
> /lib/libnsl.so.1
> /lib/libnss_files.so.1
> /lib/libnss_files.so.2
> /lib/libreadline.so.4.1
> /lib/libhistory.so.4.1
> /lib/libncurses.so.5.0
> /bin/bash
> /bin/sh (-> /bin/bash)
> /sbin/init
> /etc/fstab
> /etc/inittab
> /etc/passwd
> /etc/group
> /etc/rc
> /etc/issue
> /etc/shadow
> /etc/gshadow
> /etc/securetty
> /etc/pwdb.conf
> /etc/nsswitch.conf
> /etc/termcap
> ...

> plus all an "ldconfig -r /destdir" creates on a destdir mounted
> system ... chrooting into the mounted system works fine and all
> the shared libs kann be resolved fine with the chrooted system
> and i can run all the bins in it - but on bootup it does not
> work

> any idea?

> a lot of thanks in advance

> t

> --
> thomas.graichen@innominate.com
>                                                          innominate AG
>                                                   the linux architects
> tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com



--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?
>
>i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
>working on the ppc like i did for the i386
>
>  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/
>
>to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
>comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
>mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.

Ben.

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:

>>is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?
>>
>>i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
>>working on the ppc like i did for the i386
>>
>>  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/
>>
>>to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
>>comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
>>mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

> It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
> not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.

thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Takashi Oe]

On 25 Feb 2001, Thomas Graichen wrote:

[...]
> thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
> initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
> trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)

You may want to make the ramdisk under 2.2.x kernel or 2.4.2+loop fixes.
I've seen some loop device problem reports in linux-kernel, and it could
be contributing to your problem.


Takashi Oe


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

Takashi Oe <toe@unlserve.unl.edu> wrote:

> On 25 Feb 2001, Thomas Graichen wrote:

> [...]
>> thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
>> initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
>> trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)

> You may want to make the ramdisk under 2.2.x kernel or 2.4.2+loop fixes.
> I've seen some loop device problem reports in linux-kernel, and it could
> be contributing to your problem.

i know - but i tested the images on a normal running system both
via loopback mount and via dd to ramdisk and mount of it - both
were perfectly fine - also an fsck -f of the image file is com-
pletely ok

i did some more trying now: it seems to work with 16M (maybe with more
too) if the image is only lightly loaded - but if i fill the 16M
more it hangs at boot with

  RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

t

p.s.: this is yaboot 0.8.SuSE btw.

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Michael Schmitz]

> i did some more trying now: it seems to work with 16M (maybe with more
> too) if the image is only lightly loaded - but if i fill the 16M
> more it hangs at boot with
>
>   RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

Wouldn't that indicate a size limitation for the compressed ramdisk file
somewhere in the booter?

	Michael


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:

>>is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?
>>
>>i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
>>working on the ppc like i did for the i386
>>
>>  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/
>>
>>to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
>>comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
>>mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

> It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
> not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.

i have uploaded my test miniroot files at

  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/ppc/

maybe it's a good start to look from

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

[Thomas Graichen]

Thomas Graichen <thomas.graichen@innominate.com> wrote:
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:

>>>is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?
>>>
>>>i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
>>>working on the ppc like i did for the i386
>>>
>>>  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/
>>>
>>>to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
>>>comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
>>>mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

>> It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
>> not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.

> i have uploaded my test miniroot files at

>   http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/ppc/

> maybe it's a good start to look from

btw. i now also tried it with frsh yaboot (ybin) - 1.1.1 - still
the same problem ...

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/