* Re: [gentoo-mips] Question - Kumba LiveCD RC6
@ 2007-01-23 2:14 99% ` Kumba
0 siblings, 0 replies; 1+ results
From: Kumba @ 2007-01-23 2:14 UTC (permalink / raw
To: gentoo-mips
Mike Martin wrote:
> I recently downloaded and attempted to boot an Octane with this disk. It
> died mounting the root partition:
>
> mount: Mounting /newroot/dev/loop0 on /newroot/mnt/livecd failed:
> Invalid argument
>
> Not sure what happened. I assume I burnt the disk correctly else it
> wouldn't have made it that far. Any suggestions?
>
> MikeM
It's really hard to say. I tested it on all of my systems before uploading, and
with the Octane, this means an external drive (funny enough, an O2 CD drive
jammed into a Sun 411 case). And that booted fine on both my Octane and Indy.
"Invalid Argument" from mount could mean a wide array of things (yay for Unix's
legacy of non-descriptive, ambiguous errors). The process that occurs on an SGI
bootcd for us is a rather complex one:
1. arcload boots from the DVh partition of the CD
(yes, these CDs have partitions)
2. arcload finds and boots a kernel
3. kernel loads, and executes /init in an embedded initramfs file linked
into the kernel
4. /init does some prep work, and launches `getdvhoff` to scan the CD
for the offset of the next partition (where / lives), and passes a
number representing this offset back to `losetup`.
5. losetup uses this number to "point" /dev/loop0 at this offset, which
effectively makes /dev/loop0 a block device with data on it.
6. mount tries to mount /dev/loop0 and pivot_root into the real Gentoo
filesystem.
Quite likely, step #5 might've failed somewheres along the line. The offset has
to be exact to the bit, so maybe something got whacked in the burn and the
detected offset is invalid. Hard to say without more information. Thus, when
it got to step #6, boom.
I'd try re-burning the disk at a slower speed, use only CD-R's of decent quality
(TDK, Memorex, Sony, Ricoh/Ritek, etc,.. brands), and use cdrecord (or whatever
license-unencumbered version is out there. stupid license wars). A few people
reported getting it to work with a windows burn tool, but we have little data on
that, thus why cdrecord is the suggested tool.
Mostly, you were able to read the kernel into memory, which is ~8MB. It's
possible the disc you burned was good enough to get those 8MB off to boot the
kernel, but when it went looking for the meat, it got denied and pwned.
--Kumba
--
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead
"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." --Elrond
--
gentoo-mips@gentoo.org mailing list
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2007-01-18 18:32 [gentoo-mips] Question - Kumba LiveCD RC6 J. Scott Kasten
2007-01-22 13:53 ` Kumba
2007-01-22 14:12 ` Mike Martin
2007-01-23 2:14 99% ` Kumba
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