Re: initial setup for newbies

Hello there Scott,

Scott Walters  :
> Yes, QEMU would be handy for diagnosing problems.  That would rule out
> hardware compat/support problems.
> 
> Not finding the root drive sounds like very probably lack of support
> for your hard drive controller.
> 
> If you want to use your real hardware, you might get an IDE66
> controller off of eBay cheap and install on that.  If you have an
> on-board IDE controller, using that instead of SATA might work too.

This give a another idea... I do have a real old box here. I'll give it
a try with OpenSSI and let you know.

> If you boot a recent kernel (eg, on Knoppix or another live CD) and
> then post the output of `dmesg` and `lspci`, I (or someone) will
> likely be able to tell you whether this is the case that your SATA
> controller isn't supported.

This is easy. Since I still can boot with Debian vanilla kernel, I can
get this data anytime.

To do that, I had to "fix" the /etc/fstab changed by OpenSSI install,
that was like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc	/proc	proc	defaults,node=*	0	0
/dev/hda1	/	ext3	defaults,errors=remount-ro,node=1	0	1
/dev/hda9	/home	ext3	defaults,node=1	0	2
/dev/hda8	/tmp	ext3	defaults,node=1	0	2
/dev/hda5	/usr	ext3	defaults,node=1	0	2
/dev/hda6	/var	ext3	defaults,node=1	0	2
/dev/hda7	none	swap	sw,node=1	0	0
/dev/hdb	/media/cdrom0	iso9660	ro,user,noauto,node=1	0 0	/dev/fd0 
/media/floppy0	auto	rw,user,noauto,node=*	0 0

And I changed it to this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc	/proc	proc	defaults,node=*	0	0
/dev/hda1	/	ext3	defaults,errors=remount-ro	0	1
/dev/hda9	/home	ext3	defaults	0	2
/dev/hda8	/tmp	ext3	defaults	0	2
/dev/hda5	/usr	ext3	defaults	0	2
/dev/hda6	/var	ext3	defaults	0	2
/dev/hda7	none	swap	sw,node=1	0	0
/dev/hdb	/media/cdrom0	iso9660	ro,user,noauto	0	0
/dev/fd0	/media/floppy0	auto	rw,user,noauto	0	0

During my tests with the OpenSSI kernel, it doesn't matter which version
of /etc/fstab I left. Anyway, when I tried to add drivers to the initrd,
I left the OpenSSI fstab version as configured.

Now let's go back to the data requested:

- lspci:

0000:00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03ea (rev a1)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03e0 (rev a2)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03eb (rev a2)
0000:00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f5 (rev a2)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f1 
(rev a3)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f2 
(rev a3)
0000:00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f3 (rev a1)
0000:00:05.0 0403: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f0 (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03ec (rev a2)
0000:00:07.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03ef (rev a2)
0000:00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f6 (rev a2)
0000:00:08.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03f6 (rev a2)
0000:00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03e8 (rev a2)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03e9 (rev a2)
0000:00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 03e9 (rev a2)
0000:00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown 
device 03d0 (rev a2)
0000:01:06.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105 
[Rhine-III] (rev 8b)

- dmesg: dmesg is a bit long to post to the list. Please let me know if 
all the content of it should be posted. Anywhere, I put the parts that I 
thought that were "interesting", but I can check for other parts as well.

...

CPU: After generic identify, caps: 078bfbff ebd3fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps:  078bfbff ebd3fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After all inits, caps:        078bfbff ebd3fbff 00000000 00000410
CPU: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor LE-1150 stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
Checking for popad bug... OK.
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000004
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
init IO_APIC IRQs
  IO-APIC (apicid-pin) 4-0, 4-16, 4-17, 4-18, 4-19, 4-20, 4-21, 4-22, 
4-23 not connected.
..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=-1
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 2009.0262 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 200.0926 MHz.
checking if image is initramfs...it isn't (ungzip failed); looks like an 
initrd

...

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040326
     ACPI-0352: *** Error: Looking up [\_PR_.CPU0] in namespace, 
AE_NOT_FOUND
search_node f7abda40 start_node f7abda40 return_node 00000000
     ACPI-1133: *** Error: [NULL NAME], AE_NOT_FOUND

...

number of MP IRQ sources: 15.
number of IO-APIC #4 registers: 24.
testing the IO APIC.......................
IO APIC #4......
.... register #00: 04000000
.......    : physical APIC id: 04
.......    : Delivery Type: 0
.......    : LTS          : 0
.... register #01: 00170011
.......     : max redirection entries: 0017
.......     : PRQ implemented: 0
.......     : IO APIC version: 0011
.... register #02: 04000000
.......     : arbitration: 04
.... IRQ redirection table:


Thanks in advance,
Alceu


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