Ulrich Teichert said:

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[snip]

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There may be some problems with 2.6 kernels and pci irqs on prep. I
will
investigate this shortly.

There is definitely something strange happening. The image I used to
do the (nearly) complete install will no longer configure the network.
Very inconsistent. I will try it (same image) again later today and
see if it "just works" next time - like it did last time.

Yes, I've seen inconsistencies as well, like booting the default kernel
from a sarge CD worked *once* and rebooting not. I found out why:
during the first cold boot, the firmware asks if it should make my
serial console the active console (which I acknowledged), but with a
warm boot, this question is not asked again.

That's because the firmware will only ask that question if detects that
a mouse or keyboard is present/not present where it previously was/n't.

This seems to result in a different setting and the kernel is not able
to figure out that it is running on a serial console. According to Leigh
Browns, it is not possible to give the kernel parameters on boot-up,
unless you are using his patches, so this may be another issue.

I have a patch you can use to specify parameters on the *command line*
(e.g. boot floppy: root=/dev/sda3 ...).  However, you can always type
parameters on the serial console as it boots (see below).

But this is how far the default kernel (which is all I can load from CD)
boots:

0 > setenv load-base 1000000  ok
0 > setenv real-base c00000  ok
0 > boot cdrom:

loaded at:     01000400 01492FF4
relocated to:  00800000 00C92BF4
zimage at:     0080A94C 0093E3DC
initrd at:     0093F000 00C884AE
avail ram:     00400000 00800000

Linux/PPC load: console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0

*** This is the point you get 5 seconds to start editing the parameters.
I guess if you specify root=/dev/ram0 or something then it will boot
from the ramdisk, rather than trying to boot from /dev/sda3.

Uncompressing Linux...done.
Now booting the kernel
Total memory = 256MB; using 512kB for hash table (at c0300000)
Linux version 2.6.8-powerpc (sven@pegasos2) (version gcc 3.3.5 (Debian
1:3.3.5-2)) #1 Thu Dec 9 10:27:54 CET 2004
PReP architecture

[...]

VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(8,3)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,3)
 <0>Rebooting in 180 seconds..

Other than that, it's a nice clean boot.

[del]

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Then i suppose that copying the kernel is just a matter of :

  dd if=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-powerpc of=/dev/sdb1

but you have to have a small prep partition as /dev/sdb1, or the above
will
erase whatever you have on /dev/sdb1.

This is not enough. You need to set the kernel arguments with Leigh's
preptool (which is a simple perl script), because of the problems
mentioned before.

Well, you need to have my patch for that.  There are other ways to
manually change the boot arguments (like hexedit etc).

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I' have the partition ready ...

Unfortunately, until the network comes back up, I can't get far enough
in the install to access the SCSI drives (is there another way? Load
the modules by hand? Which ones?). Without this, I can't get at the
image I need to boot in order to get it onto the right partition. I
also can't get it to another machine to net boot it.

All this initrd thing is a mess when it gets complicated, if you ask me.
I really don't know why your floppy stops working after booting Leighs
kernel. But on the other hand, I don't know why I can't netboot my box
either - I can netboot anything else from DECstations to SGIs with the
same setup, but my 7043-44 refuses to load the kernel. It contacts the
server, figures out the name of the file, but does not request it.

For your network trouble, try to disconnect power from the box completely
for an hour or so. This was enough for my box to fall back to asking me
for the active console, maybe this works for your flaky network as well?

It should never ask the console question again unless you change the
config (plug in a mouse for example), unless your nvram battery is a
bit flat of course!