@Thematic

/boot 20GiB? Surely this is not correct?

/boot is just kernel and boot menu. / is the main filesystem which sounds correct at 20GiB.

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@olegil

/ is (in excess of) 20 GiB but it includes /boot.

Last edited by Thematic on 28-Mar-2012 at 04:30 PM.

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@Thematic

Why, though? Why not just make a 20-40MB partition, call it /boot and be done with it? Surely you would have saved yourself an AWFUL lot of time by not having to redo the root filesystem a gazillion times by now?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@Thematic

Quote:

In message #3 I mention the SLB already recognized the partition on the new drive (offering the appropriate SLB menu entry), which makes sense after all

That's interesting. It's also not a good sign if you had to format under AmigaOS to get it to work. We only have an Ext2 handler and UBoot is made to read Ext2 so it's quite possible that SLB will only work with a proper Ext2 partition.

I need to boot into Linux and check my actual volume types.

Quote:

And to add something new to thread, if some critical component was failing, how would I make a rather active two day uptime and yet not get the SLB to occasionally work?

Well in that case it looks like everytihng is in place. One thing I missed but it looks like you have done is to make sure the volume is a bootable.

Quote:

I might see the correct behaviour again if I reformatted the partition and copied the /boot files over again, but I'm very particular about not copying 20 GiB of files again and reach this very same point.

Good point. Just duplicating the /boot dir would be good enough to test. You could disable the main partition and just setup a new one to test.

Quote:

By DOS type you mean the string on the Rigid Disk Block to identify the partition type? It should be the same as ever, 0x4C4E5800 or 'LNX\00'.

Yes. And yes that is the DOS Type I have set. And BTW I also have 1024 as my blocksize set in MTB as well.

Quote:

Well, a few years ago, the ext3 partition formatted then was certainly created under a different kernel version than the one now. I wonder if the output on the partition would be similar. I know volume name and a few other bits tend to differ anyway.

Should be fine. I've updated my kernels and was able to boot from my volumes. What matters I think is the programs the makes the Ext3 filesystem on disk.

@olegil

It's standard to have a boot dir for the kernel and boot menu. It's a lot easier to just create a file for booting Linux.

A seperate partition would slightly complicate things and isn't needed.

@Hypex

How does an extra partition complicate things? It's fairly common to need one, for instance if you're using a raid or filesystem not supported by your bootloader.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Because it's another partition you then have to create. And it goes back to the early A1 Linux days. It's also needed for plaforms like the Mac where they forgot what machine it's running on and force you to create this extra boot partiion to install some bootloader which then makes the machine looks crap and old fashioned at bootup not to mention hard to see with a tiny font!

Okay I've gone off the point. The SLB can load it off anywhere. But on the A1 it's not needed for one Linux volume. Optional you could say.

@Hypex

When a user complains that he has to copy 20GB to change the filesystem of /boot then it's fairly obvious to me that putting /boot on a separate partition to begin with would be a nice thing to save a lot of hassle down the road.

And while you're at it, you should also put /home, /usr and /var on separate partitions, to minimize damage in case of filesystem problems

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

I agree 20GB is rather large. But it is up to the individual what size is the partition. Personally I use 5GB. Which is just enough for OS and some data storage.

But in any case if a new partition can be made then /boot can be moved to it.

I do like the thought of keeping home seperate to the OS but can this help when needing to reinstall the OS for an update? And what to do with different distros? Can settings and data be shared with one /home volume?

My ext2 partition went ro recently, so while I had to reconnect the previous HDD to repair it I finally tried to resize the root partition on the SDD. gparted failed, however. It did no change to the RDB, which was of course better than botching it completely.

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@Thematic

Can you mount the partition in OS4? You mentioned EXT2Filesystem early in the thread. If so you could load in and check the a1boot.conf file.

BTW make sure the path of the file is at:
/boot/a1boot.conf

BTW what's your boot entry look like?

@Hypex

I can mount it both in Linux and OS4. I have made an entry to the a1boot.conf on the HDD that will use the partition on the SSD as root filesystem. The ignored a1boot.conf looks like this:
debian /boot/boot.img.amigaone-2.6.31-1-powerpc console=tty0 ramdisk_size=16384 root=/dev/sda2 video=radeon:1024x768-8@70 l2cr=0x80000000

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@Thematic

The entry looks fine. Setting ramdisk_size is unusual.

Is your Linux volume set as bootable in both the RDB and in Linux?

That is from MTB and the Linux partitioner.

Last edited by Hypex on 21-Nov-2012 at 12:50 PM.

@Hypex

It's bootable in MTB. So is there a different part of RDB that is used in Linux? I can't remember now. But were I to venture a guess, I'd say I would have noticed that discrepancy when I tried to shrink it with gparted. I'll check it when I need fsck again, at the latest.

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@Thematic

Not entirely sure but Linux may store it's own data in the partition. I am just used to making sure it is bootable in AmigaOS and then again when I format the partition in Linux. But at that point I am usually reinstalling afresh.

Apart from that does SLB give any indication it read the file? You know when there is an error but apart from that it just seems to continue booting if it doesn't find an a1boot where it likes.

@Hypex

Nothing - I'd like to have some form of debug output.

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@Thematic

I wonder if that Andrea character can be contacted to see what SLB actually does to find the menu. And if he has a debug version.

Apart from that perhaps a list if your UBoot vars would help. Easiest to grab from a shell with NVGetVar and then a C&P.

@Hypex

Here:

Quote:

bootcmd=menu; run menuboot_cmd bootdelay=0 preboot= stdout=vga stdin=ps2kbd ide_doreset=on ide_cd_timeout=30 menucmd=menu bootmethod=boota ethact=3Com 3c920c#0 ethaddr=00:09:D2:11:01:A0 ipaddr= serverip= vga_fg_color=2 a1ide_timeout=10 sii3112ide_timeout=30 baudrate=57600 bootdevice=0:1 boot_command=diskboot sii3112ide_conf=12 a1ide_xfer=0000 a1ide_maxbus=0 a1ide_conf=0000 video_num=1 menuboot_cmd=boota; boota; boota serial1_address=3f8 serial2_address=2f8 parallel_mode=0 parallel_address=378 usb0_enable=on usb1_enable=off usb_use_header=0 ide_maxbus=0 ide_swap=0 boot1=ssii boot2=ssiicdrom boot3= boot_method=boota os4_commandline=debuglevel=0 bootargs=root=/dev/ram rw ramdisk=16384 l2cr=0x80000000 pci_irqa=9 pci_irqa_select=level pci_irqb=10 pci_irqb_select=level pci_irqc=11 pci_irqc_select=level pci_irqd=7 pci_irqd_select=level agp_enable=on agp_sideband=off agp_speed=2x boota_scan_all_HDD=on menuboot_delay=3 boota_timeout=4 boot_config=Default rescan_bootunits=on boota_no_video_menu=off sii3112ide_xfer=G0 sii3112ide_irq=11

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
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@Thematic

Two things I see.

setenv autostart yes

I don't see an autostart uboot param

Second, your bootargs are pointing to /ram, not to /sda (or whatever your drive partition is.)

Not sure if that will help...but its worth a try!

Scott

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@scabit

bootargs aren't used for SLB booting AFAIK, I've left it there for those situations where I boot from a CD.

Autostart I'm not sure about so will try it.
Though as soon as I enable the primary IDE interface of the motherboard from UBoot menu (along with boot source), it finds and boots a Linux system (or as it were, only the kernel) from there without any other changes.

Last edited by Thematic on 19-Nov-2012 at 02:03 AM.
Last edited by Thematic on 19-Nov-2012 at 02:02 AM.
Last edited by Thematic on 19-Nov-2012 at 02:00 AM.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.