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Topic: Frugal on CF for a Soekris NET4801

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och

Group: Members
Posts: 63
Joined: Sep. 2006

Posted: June 06 2007,14:24

I perfromed a frugal install from a 3.3 live CD booted on a regular laptop, on a CF known at that time as hde.
Then I edited /boot/grub/device.map so as to keep hd0 only as hde (the HDD of the orginal laptop would have been in the map otherwise).
The CF was then installed in a Soekris Net4801. This is a very light pc the console interface of which is a serial port (19200 8-N-1) I connected to my tower pc under W98. I run an hyper-terminal to see what is going on when my Sooekris is powered up.
Grub works:

Code Sample

Booting 'DSL'

root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hde1 quiet 2 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal ss
h noeject norestore
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0xf17f7]
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz
[Linux-initrd @ 0x7f29000, 0xc64e1 bytes]

But then nothing happens for a while and I eventually get

Code Sample

0`3

and cannot do anything from there.
I was wondering if any cheatcode was available so that the system knows it has to maintain tty on com port (if this is the problem).
The nice boot of DSL with colors and a looping slash may also be confusing for this very simple hardware.
Does anybody have an idea about the way to go further with DSL?

curaga

Group: Members
Posts: 2163
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: June 06 2007,14:53

Read this, it's the linux serial console howto..

By default it doesn't have a tty on serial port..

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och

Group: Members
Posts: 63
Joined: Sep. 2006

Posted: June 07 2007,14:24

Thank for this very interesting link.
By default the pc card works at 19200 but I also tried 9600 (I had to change the baud rate during the boot, when the BIOS gives the hand to Grub I guess). It stops at the same place with both baud rates:

Code Sample

Press any key to continue.
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hde1 quiet 2 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal ss
h noeject norestore console=ttyS0,9600n8
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0xf17f7]
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz
[Linux-initrd @ 0x7f29000, 0xc64e1 bytes]

Which makes me think I should modify something in minirt24 (something in initrc?).
The strange thing is that, when my hyperTerminal is configured at 9600, the funny message I get after a while with nothing (probably the duration of the boot with the console not being redirected to the serial port) is now
AT
Does DSL think the serial port is connected to a modem?

^thehatsrule^ Offline

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Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: June 07 2007,15:10

Maybe you could modify /etc/inittab to spawn gettys on your serial connection. Though I guess this could mean nothing would show up until the system was booted...

och

Group: Members
Posts: 63
Joined: Sep. 2006

Posted: June 08 2007,11:34

It seems inittab is created during the boot process for there is none in /etc (the one in minirt24).
I don't mind getting something after the boot completed only, as long as it boots (I should be able to know what happened with dmesg).
How do I modify a non existing inittab?

13 replies since June 06 2007,14:24

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