Problem with newest otheros/kboot

anthraxx · Post by **anthraxx** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:10 am

Hello,

As a friend of mine updated my ps3 to 2.10 and i had a RSX kernel, i had to update the whole thing. I used http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/Rescue
Everything worked, but after rebooting, kboot didnt want to boot my gentoo. As it said something like "eval error", i looked if my kboot.conf was correct. And it wasnt my kboot.conf, but something... other. There seems to be a something like a "mini filesystem", not correlating with the one on the harddisc (i rebootet, useing livecd, all my files where on the disc, correct kboot.conf etc). It's even missing /boot!

I'm... confused. What did i wrong?

Which otheros.bld do i need for 2.10? Does the old one's still work?
I used this one: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... theros.bld

anthraxx · Post by **anthraxx** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:26 am

uhm, i installed the otheros.bld from the gentoo iso. it had an different size then the one i used before, but i still have the same problem.
Am i the only one with this problem?!

Am i the only one in the whole world with a fake filesystem in kboot on ps3?! Or just dumb?

anthraxx · Post by **anthraxx** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 2:48 am

after some googling, i think other people encountered this problem, at different dates, distributions etc.
It seems one way to fix this is to re-make the partitions. Obviously, i dont want to do that :-(

jimparis · Post by **jimparis** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:21 am

Yes, the kboot image has an initramfs built in. Without the specific error you got, you're not going to get a specific answer, but generally you need kboot to be able to find and mount your local disk and kexec the proper kernel.

anthraxx · Post by **anthraxx** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 7:01 am

Yeah, i could boot gentoo when i write the whole boot command line (ps3da1:/boot/kernel ...).
Not very suitable for a mediacenter :-)
i'll look what causes the the kboot to fail to mount my partition. But documentation of kboot is very scarce :-(

I dont even know how to configure kboot, except for kboot.conf, which aint been loaded (?!). Maybe there was a file in /boot or /lib/modules, which i've overwritten. I havent changed any other file.

Anyway, thx for the answer, it's a little clearer for me now.

ouasse · Post by **ouasse** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:29 pm

I was being stuck for some time with the same problem on a Debian system. What I was doing was :
- type "sh" at the kboot prompt
- manually mount the root fs in readonly mode to the /mnt/root mount point
- run kboot

After some heavy googling and rtfm'ing, I finally found out what the problem was :
- The root partition must have the "/" ext2 label (use command "e2label /dev/ps3daX /", using your actual root partition device name)
- the root partition must have the bootable flag set (use the "a" command in fdisk).

This definitely solved the problem for me, using latest kboot.img from geoff's addon CD, and a recently built kernel from the ps3 kernel tree.