231 lines
5.0 KiB
HTML
231 lines
5.0 KiB
HTML
<HTML
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>Problem Solving.</TITLE
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>Alpha Miniloader Howto</TH
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><A
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NAME="AEN523"
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>9. Problem Solving.</A
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></H1
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><P
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>Here are some common problems that people have seen, together with the
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solutions.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>Reading MS-DOS floppies from the Evaluation Board Debug Monitor.</I
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> </P
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><P
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> Some of the older versions of the Evaluation Board Debug Monitor (pre-version 2.0)
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have a problem with DOS format flopies generated from Linux.
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Usually, the Debug Monitor can load the first few sectors all right, but then goes
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into an endless loop complaining about "bad sectors." Apparently,
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there is an incompatibility between the DOS file system as expected by
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the Debug Monitor and the Linux implementation of DOSFS. To make the
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long story short: if you run into this problem, try using DOS to write
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the floppy disk. For example, if loading the file <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>MILO.cab</TT
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>
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doesn't work, use a DOS machine, insert the floppy and then do:</P
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><P
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> <TABLE
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BORDER="0"
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BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0"
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WIDTH="100%"
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><TR
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><TD
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><PRE
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CLASS="SCREEN"
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> copy a:MILO.cab c:
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copy c:MILO.cab a:
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del c:MILO.cab</PRE
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></TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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> </P
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><P
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> Then try booting from that floppy again. This normally solves the problem.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>MILO displays a long sequence of <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>O></TT
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> and does not accept input.</I
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></P
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><P
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>This usually happens when MILO was built to use COM1 as a secondary console
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device. In such a case, MILO echo output to COM1 and accepts input from
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there also. This is great for debugging but not so great if you have
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a device other than a terminal connected.
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If this happens, disconnect the device or power it down until the Linux
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kernel has booted.
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Once Linux is up and running, everything will work as expected.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>MILO complains that the kernel image has the wrong magic number</I
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></P
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><P
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> Older versions of MILO did not support the ELF object file format and so
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could not recognise an ELF image and this might be your problem.
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If this is reported, upgrade to the latest MILO that you can find. All
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2.0.20 and beyond MILOs support ELF.
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On the other hand it could be that the image is indeed damaged. You should
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also note that MILO does not yet automatically distinquish between GZIP'd
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and non-GZIP'd images; you need to add the ".gz" suffix to the file name.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>MILO prints "...turning on virtual addressing and jumping to the Linux Kernel" and
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nothing else happens</I
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></P
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><P
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>One obvious problem is that the kernel image is wrongly built or is built for another
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Alpha system altogether.
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Another is that the video board is a TGA (Zlxp) device and the kernel has been built
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for a VGA device (or vice versa).
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It is worth building the kernel to echo to COM1 and then connecting a terminal to
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that serial port or retrying the kernel that came with the Linux distribution that you
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installed.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>MILO does not recognise the SCSI device</I
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></P
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><P
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>The standard MILO images include as many device drivers as are known to be stable
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for Alpha (as of now that includes the NCR 810, QLOGIC ISP, Buslogic and Adaptec 2940s
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and 3940 cards). If your card is not included, it may be that the driver is not stable
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enough on an Alpha system yet. Again, the latest MILO images are worth trying. You
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can tell which SCSI devices a MILO image has built into it by using the "show" command.</P
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><P
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><I
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CLASS="EMPHASIS"
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>MILO is unable to read your ext2 filesystem</I
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></P
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><P
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>Early versions of MILO are unable to read ext2 filesystems that have been created with
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the newer versions of mke2fs due to sparse superblocks. Upgrade to a newer MILO and this
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should fix the problem.</P
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ALIGN="left"
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HREF="x514.html"
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>Prev</A
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ALIGN="center"
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HREF="index.html"
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>Home</A
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ALIGN="right"
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HREF="x549.html"
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>Next</A
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VALIGN="top"
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>Restrictions.</TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
|
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VALIGN="top"
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>Acknowledgements.</TD
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></TR
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> |