Subject: A few(bunch? :) of questions.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 05:12:04 -0500

I've managed to grab myself a Challenge-S and have been playing with it and 
Linux.

I've gotten hardhat installed by grabbing the latest kernel image from the 
test directory.
Everything is running nice, but now that it's alive, I have a few questions.

First, has the swap problem been worked out of the latest kernels? (be hard to 
put the beast to work with no swap)

My console doesn't work, the log shows lots of getty HANGUP signals and then 
init stopping the process.

I'd like to compile a kernel that's configured for what I'm running(no hanging 
around waiting for Bootp to time out and such) Where can I get the latest 
kernel source? (base 2.2.1 blows up impressivly when trying to compile :)

Related to the above:  How do I get support for the second ethernet and all 
the other SCSI adapters?

Is there anyway I can dump the Irix drive?  As it is now, the 1 Gig drive is 
used to hold vmlinux, that's it. Is milo something that works?

I've managed to get Vnc working on the unit, so I can so virtual X stuff, very 
cool and fun. (wasn't a bad compile, just a few things to adjust)

I think that covers it for now, the Challenge is a fun toy, and under 
unixbench comes out close to my P120 Laptop.
(I can post the results if anyone's interested)

Greg

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From: Thomas Bogendoerfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:59:29 +0100

> init stopping the process.

add a a getty for /dev/ttyS0 to your /etc/inittab and remove the other 
gettys for tty0-5.

> kernel source? (base 2.2.1 blows up impressivly when trying to compile :)

You can get it from the CVS on ftp.linux.sgi.com. But there are some
minor patches missing, which I've used for the test kernels. I'll check the
stuff in next weekend and create a source tarball.

> Related to the above:  How do I get support for the second ethernet and all 

If the second ethernet is the same as the first one, it should just be a
matter of adding the necessary probing stuff. For the other SCSI adapter
your out of luck. I do have a datasheet for the wd33c95, but I doubt it's
possible to write a driver with just this information. The wd33c95 is a scsi 
script processor (for me it looks a little bit like the NCR53C7xx/8xx
chips). So we would need a script first, but I don't have any idea how
write one, because this information is missing in the datasheet.

> used to hold vmlinux, that's it. Is milo something that works?

milo doesn't work for the Indy. Ralf told me about another boot stuff, which
would allow us to get the kernel from an ext2 partition. Ralf any news ?

Thomas.

-- 
   This device has completely bogus header. Compaq scores again :-|
It's a host bridge, but it should be called ghost bridge instead ;^)
                                        [Martin `MJ' Mares on linux-kernel]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 13:12:00 +0100

> would allow us to get the kernel from an ext2 partition. Ralf any news ?

I've put this project on ice since I've got to get Linux running perfectly
_stable_ on some VME thing before I can work on something else again.  This
is now my ultimate hacking priority due to ``other opportunities''.

In any case, the code to read ext2 filesystems from ARC supported block
devices is mostly done; it'll need to be tested and debugged.  Wrapping
this code with something like an ELF load is going to be simple.

  Ralf