#3 540 will not boot kernels

[Darren Augenstein]

Have any of the kernels here been successfully booted
on the 540? I haven't been able to get one running yet.

This is what I do.

1. Install Mandrake 9.0 to an 18gb SCSI SCA drive on a
non-SGI dual Xeon machine with the following partitions

root = 1gb
FAT = 200mb
swap = 500mb
/usr = 8gb
/home = 8gb

2. Compile & install kernel (I've tried 2.2.10, 2.4.17,
2.5.59)

3. Patch kernel with appropriate patch

4. Recompile & install kernel

5. Copy vmlinux and arclx.exe to \OS\linux on the FAT
partition

6. Transplant drive to SGI 540 (sda)

7. Set boot options as follows:

Load Identifier: Mandrake
OSLoader: \OS\linux\arclx.exe
OSLoad Filename: /OS\linux\vmlinux
OS Load Partition: SCSI 2 Disk 0 Partition 2
System Partition SCSI 2 Disk 0 Partition 2
OS Load Options: root=/dev/sda1 mem=768m
gfxmem=64m video=sgivw:monitor:1600sw

The boot freezes as soon as arclx.exe grabs the kernel.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Darren

[Andrey Panin]

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user_id=16884

What version of arclx did you try ?
Did it emit any messages ?
What was your 2.5 kernel configuration ?

You can also try a precompiled 2.2.10 binary as a bootstrap.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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I am having the exact same problem with my SGI 540. Is
there anyone that has successfully installed Slackware on
their SGI 540 system?

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Logged In: NO

Here is what my screen looks like:

ARC Linux unified loader, 21jul99

OSLoadPartition: scsi(0)cdrom(0)fdisk(0)
OSLoadFilename: /sgiboot\vmlinux
OSLoadOptions: load_ramdisk=1 ramdisk_size=6000
root=/dev/fd0 rw

ARC opening scsi(0)cdrom(0)fdisk(0)sgiboot\vmlinux
ARC reading 52 bytes at offset 0

At this point it locks up the system, the mouse cursor doesn't
move, numlock/capslock do not function.

Please let me know if you have seen this problem and what
you have done to correct it.

Thanks

[Julian Brown]

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user_id=137024

I can boot my 540 with "some" kernels (can't remember what
"some" entails, though I recall my last attempt at compiling
a kernel failed after lots of trying. I possibly succeeded
at some point using gcc 2.95 rather than anything newer). I
am currently using a precompiled kernel, I think:

jules@magenta:~$ uname -a
Linux magenta 2.6.0-test2 #30 SMP Fr Sep 26 14:48:56 CEST
2003 i686 GNU/Linux

I can only boot using the "obsolete" larc.exe, and only then
from a floppy. I think it's currently booting with larc.exe
on the floppy, but with the kernel in it's own (/b, FAT32)
partition.

The system is rock solid once it's up -- currently has an
uptime of 113 days (hence this stuff is a bit hazy).

HTH,

Jules