Re: [IPCop-devel] Update on the Cobalt not booting situation.

[David W S. <avi...@ai...>]

On 11/13/2010 1:39 PM, Olaf Westrik wrote:
> Dave,
>
>>> I have a diff uploaded at least now. Basically 3000 series (Raq3/4 and
>>> Qube3) will boot the kernel fine but crashes when userspace (init) 
>>> crashes.
>>> The Raq550 which is Pentium III boots and runs fine.
>>>
>>> Once again, r4718 was the last build that will run on a 3000 series 
>>> as of
>>> now.
>>
>> Since taking r4889 and reverting glibc back to what it was prior to
>> r4719 did not get the 3000 series to init and run, I need to somehow get
>> some info as to what is really happening.
>>
>> I'm looking at how to get some debugging output from inittab on the 3000
>> series. Reverting bits and pieces of IPCop back to what was in r4718
>> prove to be on the wrong path. 4718 runs but that's getting pretty old
>> already.
>
> It took me several days to find it, but I think I finally found the 
> problem.
> Same or similar problem exists on IBM Netvista boxes (Pentium MMX CPU).
>
> Someone I know, and who is very regularly testing my latest SVN builds 
> (let's call him Super Mario ;-)), tried to install on a Netvista and 
> got hit by a kernel panic.
> Some 10+ test installations later, I slowly but steadily narrowed it 
> down and found the key difference between 4718 and 4719.
>
> I'm pretty confident the RaQ booting problem is gone as of SVN #5124.
> If you're still here and have not given up on IPCop (just kiddng there 
> ;-)), please give it a test.
>
>
> Olaf

Oh no I haven't given up. I have been keeping my tree in sync but just 
haven't tested any builds on the 3000 series in the last few weeks. Was 
busy finally figuring out how to set up an Audiocodes MP-118 FXS for 
multiple sip providers. BTW I can call Germany for well under 10 cents a 
minute while using premium routing rather than grey or white.

IPCop on the Cobalts, especially the 3000 series makes too much sense to 
give up on so I can assure you that this was far from my mind. I feel 
they are plenty powerful enough and low power (12 watts typically with 
IPCop usage) for use as a gateway device, more so than as a server. In 
fact more companies than Symantec sold this hardware as a 
firewall/router. Secureworks is another one. In a nutshell they make a 
far better router than a server, especially with flash drives. Raid 
flash seemed to work well here.

I do like the idea of using kexec in the future to enable reboot-less 
kernel upgrades. Sure it will shut many services down for a few seconds 
but this is far better than time for a reboot.

A big thanks for looking into this. I somehow knew that this could not 
be the only hardware that had difficulty.

Dave Studeman
http://www.raqcop.com