[syslinux] RH kernels and syslinux

Shane Miller smiller at intellibotrobotics.com
Wed Apr 6 08:35:28 PDT 2005


Sir or Madam,

I am in a new project writing software for 
embedded apps. We use a single board computer
consisting of (a) linux (b) syslinux boot loader
(c) compact flash file system (d) x86 processor.
(see www.embeddedx86.com) (e) other HW and SW.

Using vendor provided files, I can easily prepare
a compact flash (CF) system which boots 2.4.23
linux just fine. I can telnet in and so on and
so forth. The CF is 1GB in size.

One of my tasks is to take the magic out of the
process of putting new kernels on to the CF and
regarding the building of new kernels themselves.
This means bash scripts and documentation etc.

I have done most of that but ...

According to the vendor, replacing an existing
kernel on the CF requires two and just two steps.
To be specific, I start with a perfectly fine
1GB CF consisting of 2.4.23.

Using RH9.0, I build a kernel for 2.4.25. Now I
want to replace 2.4.23 on the CF with 2.4.25 on
my RH9.0 box. According to the vendor I must:

(*) replace the bzImage with the bzImage from
    the new kernel. This amounts, after mounting
    the CF, to just a single ``cp" command.
(*) also replace the /lib/modules tree on the
    CF with the /lib/modules tree from the new
    kernel. It is convienent to issue the command
    make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=<dir>
    and then remove the /lib/modules tree on the
    CF and then recursively copy the new tree
    under <dir>/lib/modules/<kernel-name>/*

When I do these steps, and reboot, my system now
displays the contents of display.txt (which is 
part of syslinux) and then appears to hang. To 
the best of my knowledge it never displayed this
menu previously and immediately booted 2.4.23.

(I made no other changes to an otherwise working
2.4.23 CF.)

I suspect that there is something woefully incomplete
about the install steps here. The above information
is already the best that they can give. Yes, believe
it or not.

Don't I have to deal with initrd (initial ram disk)?
System.map? Anything else? 

Help!

Shane

==========================================================

Contents of syslinux.cfg:

[root at chef 1]# cat syslinux.cfg
SERIAL 1 115200
TIMEOUT 10
PROMPT 1
DEFAULT linux
 
DISPLAY display.txt
 
LABEL initrd
        KERNEL bzImage
        APPEND root=/dev/ram0 initrd=initrd.gz console=ttyS1,115200
devfs=nomount
 
LABEL linux
        KERNEL bzImage
        APPEND root=/dev/hda2 reboot=bios console=ttyS1,115200
 
LABEL nfs
        KERNEL bzImage
        APPEND console=ttyS1,115200 root=/dev/nfs
nfsroot=192.168.0.18:/home/mike/nfs/
nfsaddrs=192.168.0.50:192.168.0.18::255.255.255.0:epc:eth0:none
 
LABEL dos
        KERNEL rom-dos.bss
 
# Add the following line to append for TS-3300 or TS-5300 Rev C or older
# hdb=none hdc=none hdd=none hde=none hdf=none hdg=none hdh=none
hdi=none hdj=none hdk=none hdl=none
 
# for TS-9500 with Compact Flash as IDE2 and VGA as console:
#1) add jumper for IRQ5 on TS-9500 on TS-3300 or TS-5300 only
#2) add "ide1=0x170,0x376,5" to APPEND line, remove "hdc=none" if
present
#3) change console=ttyS1 to console=tty1
#NOTE: your logins are dependant on /etc/inittab not syslinux.cfg





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