[U-Boot-Users] 1.1.4 and 2.6 kernel

[Michael Schwingen <rincewind@discworld.dascon.de>]

alfred hitch wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am trying to get 2.6 kernel boot on a plattfor very similar to ixdp425.
> We already have u-boot 1.1.1 and 2.4 kernel working for us. But, while 
> trying to get the 2.6 working.
>
> I get the Booting image at XXXX
> XXXX
> Starting Kernel ...
>
> And after that nothing.
>
> At this stage I am expecting the "Uncompressing Linux ......"
>
> What could be going wrong ? Same board, if I put in 2.4 on a 1.1.4 
> version u-boot, it boots fine.
>
> Is it some tty redirection issue ??
> Only change from IXDP425 board is sdram configuration and ttyS1 for 
> console instead of ttyS0.
> Suspecting later but then 2.4 shouldnt' have also booted up ?
Maybe.

I just ran into similar problems. Since I had trouble getting a kernel 
to boot on my custom IXP425 board, I borrowed a IXDP425 board last 
weekend and tried that.

I have:
 - IXDP425 board with redboot in flash
 - a working kernel that can be booted by redboot via tftp.

Replacing redboot by u-boot (pulled from git last week), the kernel is 
started, but the early output (like "uncompressing kernel") does not 
appear on any of the UART ports.

When the kernel finally has the console set up, the messages appear - 
but if it panics before that point, there is no output at all.

Tracing into the kernel startup using gdb + bdi2000, I found no obvious 
reason as to why this happens, but I did not have enough time to really 
dig into the problem - and since I found the reason for my hang, this 
has now moved down in priority a bit. I can boorow the IXDP425 board 
again if absolutely necessary.

My guess would be that u-boot leaves the hardware in some different 
state than redboot, so that the early UART output in the linux kernel 
fails, but this is only a guess. However, since this happens only with 
u-boot and not with redboot, it does not seem to be a pure linux problem.


As a sidenote, the SDRAM config for the IXDP425 seems wrong to me: the 
board has 256MB SDRAM, but config.h shows only 16MB?

cu
Michael