ppc initrd problem?

8 messages, 4 authors, 2001-02-27 · open the first message on its own page

ppc initrd problem?

From: Thomas Graichen <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-24 20:40:21

is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386

  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...

the symptoms are:

* it starts booting fine
* it finds and uncomresses the initrd into the ramdisk fine too
* it mounts it as root fine too
* it starts init
* init tries to run the rc shell script and this results in bash
  failing to load it's shared libs (it fails on libreadline which
  is the first): it says something about incorrect ELF header -
  but the files in the initrd are ok and all should be there (the
  libs, ld.so and i even ran ldconfig on it)

i have no real idea what happens here - as said - the same thing
works fine in the i386 case ... ok some more details:

* yaboot.conf

  image = vmlinux-2.4.1-XFS
      label = miniroot
      append = "ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1"
      initrd = miniroot.gz
      root = /dev/ram

* the initrd is created with:

  mkdir -p /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/miniroot bs=1024k count=32
  mke2fs -N 32768 /tmp/miniroot
  mount -o loop /tmp/miniroot /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  tar cSlf - `cat /root/miniroot/files.70` | tar xSpf -
  tar xSpzf /root/miniroot/miniroot-add.tgz
  ldconfig -r /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd ..
  umount /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cat /tmp/miniroot | gzip -9 > /root/miniroot.gz
  rmdir /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  rm -i /tmp/miniroot

* the filelist is (excluding stuff not mattering here, all files are
from SuSE 7.0/ppc):

/lib/ld-2.1.3.so
/lib/ld.so.1 (-> /lib/ld-2.1.3.so)
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/libpam.so.0.72
/lib/libpam_misc.so.0.72
/lib/libdl.so.2
/lib/libcrypt.so.1
/lib/librt.so.1
/lib/libresolv.so.2
/lib/libutil.so.1
/lib/libpthread.so.0
/lib/security/*
/lib/libnsl.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.2
/lib/libreadline.so.4.1
/lib/libhistory.so.4.1
/lib/libncurses.so.5.0
/bin/bash
/bin/sh (-> /bin/bash)
/sbin/init
/etc/fstab
/etc/inittab
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/rc
/etc/issue
/etc/shadow
/etc/gshadow
/etc/securetty
/etc/pwdb.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/termcap
...

plus all an "ldconfig -r /destdir" creates on a destdir mounted
system ... chrooting into the mounted system works fine and all
the shared libs kann be resolved fine with the chrooted system
and i can run all the bins in it - but on bootup it does not
work

any idea?

a lot of thanks in advance

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Thomas Graichen <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-24 22:13:58

ok - track it down a bit better:

* it looks like the initrd filesystem gets trashed somehow
* i was able to add a /bin/ash.static to it and boot into
  it using "init=/bin/ash.static" - there some files were
  ok but others resulted in ext2 errors - also the whole
  /sbin dir was trashed which results in the mysterious
  init shared lib problems i saw)
* the image used is ok (tried it via loopback mount and via
  ramdisk in a normal boot with the same kernel - both are
  ok - but then used for booting i get the corruption)
* with certain images (for instance the same with all the
  32768 replaced by 28672 in the creation process) the
  kernel completely hangs after the "found compressed ram-
  disk ..." line

does anyone have an idea here?

anybody else used big initrd's on the ppc?

again - a lot of thanks in advance

t

Thomas Graichen [off-list ref] wrote:
is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?
i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386
  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/
to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...
the symptoms are:
* it starts booting fine
* it finds and uncomresses the initrd into the ramdisk fine too
* it mounts it as root fine too
* it starts init
* init tries to run the rc shell script and this results in bash
  failing to load it's shared libs (it fails on libreadline which
  is the first): it says something about incorrect ELF header -
  but the files in the initrd are ok and all should be there (the
  libs, ld.so and i even ran ldconfig on it)
i have no real idea what happens here - as said - the same thing
works fine in the i386 case ... ok some more details:
* yaboot.conf
  image = vmlinux-2.4.1-XFS
      label = miniroot
      append = "ramdisk_size=40000 load_ramdisk=1"
      initrd = miniroot.gz
      root = /dev/ram
* the initrd is created with:
  mkdir -p /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/miniroot bs=1024k count=32
  mke2fs -N 32768 /tmp/miniroot
  mount -o loop /tmp/miniroot /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  tar cSlf - `cat /root/miniroot/files.70` | tar xSpf -
  tar xSpzf /root/miniroot/miniroot-add.tgz
  ldconfig -r /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cd ..
  umount /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  cat /tmp/miniroot | gzip -9 > /root/miniroot.gz
  rmdir /tmp/miniroot-mnt
  rm -i /tmp/miniroot
* the filelist is (excluding stuff not mattering here, all files are
from SuSE 7.0/ppc):
/lib/ld-2.1.3.so
/lib/ld.so.1 (-> /lib/ld-2.1.3.so)
/lib/libc.so.6
/lib/libpam.so.0.72
/lib/libpam_misc.so.0.72
/lib/libdl.so.2
/lib/libcrypt.so.1
/lib/librt.so.1
/lib/libresolv.so.2
/lib/libutil.so.1
/lib/libpthread.so.0
/lib/security/*
/lib/libnsl.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.1
/lib/libnss_files.so.2
/lib/libreadline.so.4.1
/lib/libhistory.so.4.1
/lib/libncurses.so.5.0
/bin/bash
/bin/sh (-> /bin/bash)
/sbin/init
/etc/fstab
/etc/inittab
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/rc
/etc/issue
/etc/shadow
/etc/gshadow
/etc/securetty
/etc/pwdb.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/termcap
...
plus all an "ldconfig -r /destdir" creates on a destdir mounted
system ... chrooting into the mounted system works fine and all
the shared libs kann be resolved fine with the chrooted system
and i can run all the bins in it - but on bootup it does not
work
any idea?
a lot of thanks in advance
t
--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com


--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Date: 2001-02-25 00:48:58

is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386

 http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...
It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.

Ben.

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Thomas Graichen <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-25 08:33:49

Benjamin Herrenschmidt [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386

 http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...
It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.
thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Takashi Oe <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-25 08:43:50

On 25 Feb 2001, Thomas Graichen wrote:

[...]
thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)
You may want to make the ramdisk under 2.2.x kernel or 2.4.2+loop fixes.
I've seen some loop device problem reports in linux-kernel, and it could
be contributing to your problem.


Takashi Oe


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Thomas Graichen <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-25 09:06:22

Takashi Oe [off-list ref] wrote:
On 25 Feb 2001, Thomas Graichen wrote:
[...]
quoted
thanks a lot - btw. also tried it with 16M - same thing - compressed
initrd image hangs and an uncompressed loads but seems to have only
trash in it ("cannot find init" while /sbin/init is definitely in it)
You may want to make the ramdisk under 2.2.x kernel or 2.4.2+loop fixes.
I've seen some loop device problem reports in linux-kernel, and it could
be contributing to your problem.
i know - but i tested the images on a normal running system both
via loopback mount and via dd to ramdisk and mount of it - both
were perfectly fine - also an fsck -f of the image file is com-
pletely ok

i did some more trying now: it seems to work with 16M (maybe with more
too) if the image is only lightly loaded - but if i fill the 16M
more it hangs at boot with

  RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

t

p.s.: this is yaboot 0.8.SuSE btw.

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Michael Schmitz <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-26 12:33:18

i did some more trying now: it seems to work with 16M (maybe with more
too) if the image is only lightly loaded - but if i fill the 16M
more it hangs at boot with

  RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Wouldn't that indicate a size limitation for the compressed ramdisk file
somewhere in the booter?

	Michael


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: ppc initrd problem?

From: Thomas Graichen <hidden>
Date: 2001-02-27 07:16:13

Benjamin Herrenschmidt [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
is there any known problem with initrd's on the ppc?

i am currently trying to get a small initrd based standalone system
working on the ppc like i did for the i386

 http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/

to make the playing around with the xfs filesystem a bit more
comfortable but it does not really boot on the ppc (new world
mac, 2.4.1 kernel, SuSE 7.0/ppc) ...
It's a 32Mb initrd ? Well, it's possible that it gets broken then. I'm
not sure yaboot support such a large ramdisk. I'll give it a look.
i have uploaded my test miniroot files at

  http://innominate.org/~graichen/projects/miniroot/ppc/

maybe it's a good start to look from

t

--
thomas.graichen@innominate.com
                                                         innominate AG
                                                  the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-13   fax: -77             http://www.innominate.com

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
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