Subject: able to bootp/NFS-install/reboot R4400SC Indy

From: Joan Eslinger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 99 22:27:00 -0800

So, I've had an old Indy in my office, waiting for me to try installing
Linux on in my spare time, and today I finally got around to it. Lucky
for me I didn't try before today, because the kernel that finally worked
was the very latest, vmlinux-indy-990212.

After the one in the big hardhat tar.gz file didn't work (no R4400SC
support) I hit the mailing list archive, found the pointer to
vmlinux-2.1.131 (which didn't work because it didn't have NFS), noticed
also vmlinux-sc-indy-2.1.116 (also didn't work, probably also no NFS),
and tried a couple of others while going through the archive.
vmlinux-indy-990205 got a little farther, but complained it couldn't
make a device node in the ram disk or some such thing.

Anyway, vmlinux-indy-990212 was the winner: it booted up into the
installer, I was able to do a complete install (ignoring swap, as web
page says), and it's up and running. I'm sending this out to let those
who've been having trouble with Indy/R4400SC know that it can be done
now!

---

From: Eric Melville <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 22:43:57 -0800

drats... that's the kernel (er, one of the kernels) that hangs on
"freeing unused kernel memory" for me :(

-E

---

From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 02:08:36 -0500 (EST)

> who've been having trouble with Indy/R4400SC know that it can be done

Okay, that's cool.  Could you give us an output from your irix's hinv?

- Alex

-- 
Alex deVries, puffin on LinuxNet.
I know exactly what I want in life.

---

From: Joan Eslinger <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 99 23:14:32 -0800

Right, meant to do that the first time and forgot:

In IRIX,
% hinv
Iris Audio Processor: version A2 revision 4.1.0
1 175 MHZ IP22 Processor
FPU: MIPS R4000 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 0.0
CPU: MIPS R4400 Processor Chip Revision: 6.0
On-board serial ports: 2
On-board bi-directional parallel port
Data cache size: 16 Kbytes
Instruction cache size: 16 Kbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Main memory size: 64 Mbytes
Vino video: unit 0, revision 0, IndyCam not connected
Integral ISDN: Basic Rate Interface unit 0, revision 1.0
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version WD33C93B, revision D
  Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 0
  Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0
Graphics board: Indy 24-bit

In Linux,
% cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu                     : MIPS
cpu model               : R4000SC V6.0
system type             : SGI Indy
BogoMIPS                : 87.24
byteorder               : big endian
unaligned accesses      : 0
wait instruction        : no
microsecond timers      : no
extra interrupt vector  : no
hardware watchpoint     : yes
VCED exceptions         : 12424
VCEI exceptions         : 37454

---

From: Eric Melville <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 22:54:41 -0800

wait a sec, this is almost identical to mine! R4400 revision 6.0 ... the
only difference i see is that mine was 200 mhz. what's up with this?
please, i'd love to get this thing booted so that i can start helping
with the porting efforts!

-E

---

From: Thomas Bogendoerfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 01:52:51 +0100

> with the porting efforts!

I doubt, that your problem is clock rate related. What does your
NFS root look like. Are you using the HardHat root filesystem ?
What type of NFS box are you using ?

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]

---

From: Eric Melville <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 02:04:05 -0800

it says ---

offset = 0
offset = 1
offset = 2
offset = 3
offset = 0
offset = 1
offset = 2

etc etc etc

???????

-E

> I had encountered a problem once with a bad R4400 CPU (only one)
> incorrectly loading halfword (16-bit) values from memory.  The
> following uuencoded gzipped mips2 binary mallocs lines of four
> halfwords, loads it with a certain bit pattern, and then in a loop
> checks all 0th halfwords, then all 1st, then 2nd, then 3rd.  (I had
> problems with the 3rd halfwords.)
> 
> Boot up IRIX and give it a try.  If it prints out anything other
> than "offset = 0", etc., then there is a problem.  (You could probably run
> it under miniroot as well.)  It was built on 6.2.

---

From: Eric Melville <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 02:08:00 -0800

the file system came straight from hardhat. it all appears to be normal,
and the indy appears to mount the nfs root just fine. the system
exporting nfs is an x86 linux box.

-E

---

From: Chad Carlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 12:14:22 -0600

I got my 200MHz R4400 working too. Yes it actually boots. I guess you guys
weren't making all this stuff up after all.

I have one problem though. Something is broken in modules. The networking
stuff is working incorrectly because of this. When I try to telnet in from
another host, the linux-indy panics. I can hand copy more verbose
information when I get home if this is not a common problem that everyone
else knows the answer to.

Almost there.
Chad

--
           -----------------------------------------------------
            Chad Carlin                          Special Systems
            Silicon Graphics Inc.                   972.205.5911
            Pager 888.754.1597          VMail 800.414.7994 X5344
            [email-masked]             http://reality.sgi.com/chad
           -----------------------------------------------------
        "flying through hyper space ain't like dusting crops, boy"

---

From: Eric Melville <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 14:56:57 -0800

does your hinv say R4400 revision 6.0? if so, let me know which kernel
you've booted, because i havn't found any that don't hang during boot :(

-E

---

From: Chad Carlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 19:28:04 -0600

Ralf,

On closer observation......

The message in the syslog is as follows:
kernel: kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k net-pf-N, errno = 2

ls -l /sbin/modprobe
.....No such file or directory

Obviously, I need modprobe. I wonder how I didn't get modprobe?

Other info:
uname -r  = 2.1.131

cat /proc/cpuinfo

cpu: MIPS
cpu model: R4000SC V6.0
system type: SGI Indy
BogoMIPS: 99.94
........

Let me know if you want to see more.

[email-masked] wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 12:14:22PM -0600, Chad Carlin wrote:
>
> I'd appreciate a more detailed bug report with all the messages you got.
> Which kernel binary exactly were you using?
>
>   Ralf

---

From: "Mark A. Zottola" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 20:23:48 -0600

Actually we are running into the same problem as we attempt to port Linux to the
Indigo2. Does anyone know where we can get the list of errata for the R4400
revision 6.0? That info is not currently available upon SGI's web pages... Any
pointers to this information (or a copy of same) would be greatly appreciated!

Mark

--
*********
Mark A. Zottola                       Alabama Research and Education Network
119 Rust Research Center              Nichols Research Corporation
University of Alabama-Birmingham      VOICE:  (205) 934-3893
Birmingham, AL  35294                 EMAIL:  [email-masked]

---

From: Chad Carlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 23:20:25 -0600

Ok. Somebody shoot me. I went through and reinstalled linux on my Indy. I
thought that I screwed up and somehow did not get modutils-x.x.x-x because
I chose to install the wrong package set. I think I was wrong there too.

Problem:
- modutils-x.x.x-x does not get installed by the base installer. (or I
don't know which one it goes with)
- Can't get this package over the network because if I try to use my
network interface, the system panics. It panics because I don't have
modutils.
- BTW howto-french-5.1.1 seems to be corrupted in the distribution. My indy
always hangs when trying to install it. Hence, I have to deselect
optional-documentation during install.

Thanks for any help. I'm feel like I'm so close here.

Chad

---

From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 01:21:02 -0500 (EST)

> don't know which one it goes with)

Yup. modutils was broken at the time when Rough Cuts was put together.
Theres a newer package that does work on the ftp site.

> network interface, the system panics. It panics because I don't have

Why do you need modules to get your network going?

> optional-documentation during install.

We know that. :)

- Alex

---

From: Chad Carlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:51:24 -0600

Alex,

I get this error message in my syslog.
kernel: kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k net-pf-N, errno = 2

/sbin/modprobe is not on my system. Why is it trying to execute? According to
rpm -qf /sbin/modprobe on my intel-Linux system, this executable gets installed
with modutils. I am jumping to a conclusion that this error message is telling
me why networking is not running properly. More specifically, I have tried
rlogin, telnet, ftp and nfs. All of these panic the system.

I grabbed
ftp://linus.linux.sgi.com/pub/linux/mips/hardhat/5.2/RPMS/mipseb/modutils-2.1.121-4.mipseb.rpm
and put that in with the other rpms in my installation nfs filesystem. It didn't
get picked up during my nfsroot install. I guess I need to look at  some sort of
installation script to find where it get's it's list of packages to install.

Heck, I might be barking up the wrong tree after all.

Thanks,
Chad