Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo RC3 kernel booting with AMD K6

[Brian Snipes <bsnipes@southernnetwork.com>]

On Tue, 09 Jan 2001 14:32:10 +0100
320095285153-0001@t-online.de (Achim Gottinger) wrote:

> Achim Gottinger wrote:
> 
> > Achim Gottinger wrote:
> >
> > > Brian Snipes wrote:
> > >
> > > > OK. I followed the installation instructions from gentoo.org and my
> > > > booting of the bzImage kernel stops at:
> > > >
> > > > VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.
> > > > Freeing unused kernel memory: 220k freed
> > > >
> > > > And then it pauses forever. Does the kernel support K6 processors or is
> > > > it PII+ only or does anyone else have any ideas what might be the problem?
> > >
> > > Hi Brian,
> > >
> > > I tested to install on a K6 yesterday too. The bootcd freezes after linuxrc
> > > is finished
> > > So init gets not started.
> > > I compiled everything here with -mpentium not -mpentiumpro, so the
> > > optimization can not be the cause
> > > for that. The tarnge thing is that older versions of gentoo worked fine on
> > > K6/2 machines here.
> > >
> > > If you have found the bug, please tell me, meanwhile I will try get things
> > > working here.
> > >
> >
> > I was unable to fix this bug till now. :-/
> > But I found out at which place the system hangs.
> > It is definately /sbin/init that does not work.
> > I modified /usr/src/linux/init/main.c a bit to output more info what is going
> > on at the moment.
> > And I found out that the last call in mail.c that succeeds is
> > execve(/sbin/init....).
> > This function does not return on sucess, so I think /sbin/init can be executed
> > but hangs then.
> > So I will focus on init now.
> 
> I build an statically linked init with -m486 and replaced the init on my
> testsystem with that.
> 
> Now if I boot I see the INIT headline after "Freeing unused memory" then the
> system freezes.
> I make a -m486 optimized sys.tbz2 now and will try that.
> 

Thanks!  I am not a C programmer (only PHP, so far) but if there is any testing I can do let me know.

Brian Snipes