[gentoo-embedded] Booting gentoo-sources-2.6.26 on OLPC hardware

[Jean-Claude Gervais <jc.gervais@videotron.ca>]

Hello,

	I am trying to get Gentoo running on a GiveOneGetOne (G1G1) OLPC
laptop.

	I started by installing Gentoo on a generic x86 machine in kvm. The
disk image size for the virtual machine is set to 8GB and formatted in
ext2 as this corresponds to how I have partitioned and formatted an 8GB
Kingston DataTraveler High Speed USB 2.0 Flash drive. I used the 'small'
filesystem setting.

	I understand I could also have used chroot and bypassed the emulator,
but this way I could boot the system and check that all required
services start, customize the desktop, etc... The OLPC has very modest
and slow hardware, doing as much of these things as I could in the
emulator would save time.

	Once a virtual machine was ready, I shut it down, mounted its disk
image as a regular directory and copied its files over to the 8GB flash
drive.

	I was able to boot the '/' partition (but NOT the gentoo-sources
kernel, yet) by adapting the procedure detailed here:
http://icrontic.com/articles/ubuntu_net_remix_olpcxo

	Basically, you
	 - copy a signed OLPC kernel into the /boot folder of the USB drive.
	 - copy the kernel's modules into the /lib folder of the USB drive.
	 - copy a special /security folder into the / folder of the USB drive.
	 - create a special text file (olpc.fth) in the /boot folder of the USB
drive.

	Once all these things are in place, you insert the USB drive into the
OLPC, power the OLPC ON and hold down the 'check' button and your Gentoo
installation boots atop the signed OLPC kernel.

	This works well. Gnome runs, sound works.

	Once I was able to verify that given a signed kernel the installation
would boot, I moved on to getting the gentoo-sources-2.6.26 kernel to
boot.

	To permit this, I had to put a developer key (a file) in the /security
folder. Once the key is in place, the OLPC's OpenFirmware sees it and
permits booting unsigned kernels.

Now my kernel does boot and initializes some of the hardware but it
never succeeds in mounting the '/' partition.

I have a detailed listing of the run here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-703724.html

If anyone has any idea at all, I would welcome it.

Thanks in advance
J