Troubles booting sparc64 SMP 2.4.18 kernel

[Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam@mega-nerd.com>]

Hi all,

I've got linux running on an dual CPU E220R. The base system is Debian Woody and 
I've installed the sparc64 compiler and binutils

    root@razor > sparc64-linux-gcc -v
    Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/sparc-linux/3.0.3/specs
    Configured with: ../src/configure -v --enable-languages=c --prefix=/usr 
      --infodir=/share/info --mandir=/share/man --enable-shared --with-gnu-as 
      --with-gnu-ld --with-system-zlib --enable-long-long --enable-nls --without-x 
      --without-included-gettext --disable-checking --with-cpu=v7 sparc-linux
    Thread model: single
    gcc version 3.0.3
    root@razor > ld -V
    GNU ld version 2.11.92.0.12.3 20011121 Debian/GNU Linux
      Supported emulations:
       elf32_sparc
       sparclinux
       elf64_sparc
       sun4

I am able to build a working uni-processor sparc64 kernel which boots and works 
as expected :

    root@razor > cat sizeof.c 
    #include <stdio.h>
    
    int main (void)
    {	printf ("sizeof (void*) = %d\n", sizeof (void*)) ;
        return 0 ;
    } /* main */

    root@razor > sparc64-linux-gcc -m64 sizeof.c -o sizeof
    root@razor > ./sizeof 
    sizeof (void*) = 8

This seems to suggest that this is a 64 bit aware kernel.

If I then take the working uni-processor kernel tree, switch
on SMP support and then do 

    make dep ; make clean ; make ; make modules ; 
    make modules_install

and copy the kernel to /boot, run SILO and reboot, it starts off
OK but the seems to fail just after init is run. This is the last 
part of the boot messages:

    IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 64Kbytes
    TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 32768)
    NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
    version 2.84 booting
    cannot ®¨Høcannot fork, retry..
    cannot fork, retry..
    cannot fork, retry..
    ¹½Ñ™½É­É•ÑÉåÿ

I have also tried to boot a 32 bit only SMP kernel but that fails in the
same way. Anybody have any clues?

Cheers,
Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Seen on usenet (possibly a quote from an IBM exec):
"Each large company needs its Vietnam, and Microsoft will
 experience it with NT..."