no hang on 2.0.105! (was: hang during boot on 2.0.103 - not ....)

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003, Robert wrote:

....

>I haven't looked closely in that sources directory but you'll be looking
>for a kernel .config file; a quick search of the mailing list archive
>shows the kernel version is 2.2.20 and the patches are:
>
>ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/sct/ext3/v2.2
>tomsrtbt-sources ... rb/v2/in-rb-src/bz2.diff
>
>I would say you should either use that 2.2.20 kernel version (with
>patches) or upgrade to a 2.4.X version with no patches and lose the
>bzip2 compression of the floppy.
>

I used that 2.2.20 kernel and patches.    After a bit of a search to find a 
compiler that would still compile it correctly - I found egcs 1.1.2 which 
worked fine.  THANK YOU for that information!

> > Lastly - umm - probably also pretty dumb - how will doing all of this 
>fix my hang?
> > Are you saying that by turning off any references to SCSI_PPA in the 
>kernel config, that will
> > suppress the auto-detect probe for the ppa's?    I guess that makes 
>sense but from looking at boot messages
> > it seems to me that this auto-probing happens before modules got loaded 
>- i.e. was controlled by something else?
>
>I'm saying you don't actually know which probe is causing the hang, all
>you know is that it _looks_like_ it _might_be_ a scsi driver, there are
>several and it's not clear the order that they are probed. What you do
>know is that it's not a module, its one of the drivers that's built into
>the kernel so I'm suggesting you remove as many drivers as you can from
>the kernel, that way the auto-detects will not run.

Just removing the PPA and IMM pieces with CONFIG_SCSI=y resulted in same old 
hang on the thinkpad.   I removed all native SCSI support altogether and it 
then booted ok.

>--
>Rob.                          (Robert de Bath <robert$ @ debath.co.uk>)
>                                        <http://www.cix.co.uk/~mayday>
>

Well, I'm over the big hurdle - it now boots and I have ext3.   One comment, 
One problem, one question:

Comment:
With the linux 2.2.20 drivers, my thinkpad ethernet (PCI etherexpress 100) 
wasn't detected.   I got it working by downloading a new set of network 
device drivers (in particular eepro100.c and pci-scan.c) from Donald 
Becker's site
http://www.scyld.com/network/eepro100.html

Problem:
no mouse support.   My mouse is a USB mouse.   I turned on every kernel 
option relating to mouse, USB, usb_uhci etc.     Still no console mouse.    
I would really like the mouse to work.   I see some references to mouse in 
the archives but no statement as to what the situation is.    Can mouse 
support be added?   What is needed to do so?    I assume there is more to it 
than just kernel options?     When booting my regular system, I see 
something called gpm which says it is something to do with "console mouse 
services".    Is this what I need?   Could I get a version of gpm compatible 
with linux 2.2.20 and add it to the tomsrtbt build?

Question:
is there a way to pre-set kernel boot parms?   I suppose there must be but I 
missed how to.  I built the parport and plip into the kernel (actually I got 
rid of all modules and module support) but now I'd like a way of setting the 
parport device address so I don't have to type it (or forget it) every time, 
as the autoprobe gets it wrong.    Actually even when I type it as e.g.
     bz2bzImage parport=0x3BC,7
it still ends up assigning address 0x378 so maybe this kernel parm simply 
doesn't work?

Thanks again - I was so pleased to see that 2.0.105 finally booting up on 
the thinkpad ...    John

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