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some remarks on weird platform installations




debugging a mostly-working system is pretty straightforward - check the
logs, search the manpages, howtos, web, list archives etc, but what
about when the virginal system won't even run the installation?

I had to install this week linux on two problematic platforms. debugging
was sometimes a bit tricky, and sometimes required downright randomly
original ideas to try and solve. I'd love to share my findings, and ask
people here if they would have approached it differently, maybe I'll try
more tricks in the future...

(sorry if repeating some previously posted details, this time I'm
crossposting to another list too. please answer me IN PRIVATE, and I'll 
digest and post back if any good tips are gathered.)

first were the two Compaq SP700 machines at work, RHL 5.2's install
floppy, as well as VAR's rescue root-boots all failed. VFS complained on
not being able to mount 08:18 when it was supposed to go to the Ram disk
(?!). after much failed tests (disabling and reenabling stuff in the
BIOS included) a Compaq employee clued me in:

* run te install with the commandline mem=128M to limit memory usage
somehow makes the RAMdrive creation smoother, installation works ok.
(that was the solution)

* those compaq machines sometimes come with both onboard as well as
add-on scsi, which don't share IRQs well on linux. disabling the card
and moving the disks to the internal one is Compaq's sugestion (dubius,
in my book)

* the default setup for these machines is all cards set to IRQ 11
(Video, net, ide0 and ide1, USB, Firewire and both SCSI cards) while NT
has no problems with that, Linux can't grok it. is a fix in the works?

* although all cards identify themselves as compaq, the ethernet is
actually Intel Etherexress Pro (100) and the SCSI is NCR. Linux won't
autodetect in all cases...


case 2: this weekend, installed RHL 5.2 also on my neighbours brand new
Gateway machine (I tried to get him to get Dell, with a friendlier
attitude towards Linux, but...). I asked him to insist on a detailed
list of included cards, and changes to linux-supported stuff if
available, but I never expected Gateway to really help. they gave him a
blackbox with warrenty stickers on the box hinges (how will I add a NIC
now?) and told him others have already installed Linux on their boxes,
so it must work...

ok, so here goes (crack knuckles)

* onboard IDE had the Zip on hda, CDROM on hdc, cd-rw on hdd. the 13.5 
gig WD ultra-DMA disk sitting as Primary master on an add-on Promise
Ultra-66 card. RHL's boot floppy didn't detect it by itself, after some
amused digging in /proc/pci and a succesful search of mailing list on
web archives through google.com/linux I found the solution was similar
to the one for Ultra33 - add a kernel commandline like
ide2=0x10c0,0x1016 (YMMV, each system may allocate it in another place)
and hde will reveal itself. Ofcourse, finding that information meant
rebooting into windows and connecting to the ISP... what would have I
done with a virgin machine?

* forget about lilo when your root is 10 gigs down the disk. loadlin
worked smoothly for me, just remember that ide2= line again...

* reconfiguring linux-2.2.5ac3 for that machine I dug into "boot
off-board devices"and it seems like it may solve the ide2= commandline,
question is if I want to use it? it will rename all the hd? device names
since ide0 and 1 will now be 2 and 3 and vice versa. I'm sticking to
using it as hde for no, until someone tells me I'm missing anything.

* the video card only says it's a Voodoo Bunshee chipset, nothing about
the OEM. I dug till I found an alpha patch to XFRee86 for it. not going
to bust GW's balls just yet, I'm still collecting evidence. I'm sure the
soundcard won't be anything obvious to solve either, and I haven't
tested the modem (didn't look like winmodem from windows).

ok, 6:16am, time to go to bed.


-- 
Ira Abramov ;  whois:IA58  ;  www.scso.com ;  all around Linux enthusiast 
                              --  "Of course Unix is a user friendly OS, 
                              it is just very picky about its friends..."