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Mike Martin wrote: |
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> I recently downloaded and attempted to boot an Octane with this disk. It |
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> died mounting the root partition: |
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> |
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> mount: Mounting /newroot/dev/loop0 on /newroot/mnt/livecd failed: |
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> Invalid argument |
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> |
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> Not sure what happened. I assume I burnt the disk correctly else it |
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> wouldn't have made it that far. Any suggestions? |
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> |
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> MikeM |
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It's really hard to say. I tested it on all of my systems before uploading, and |
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with the Octane, this means an external drive (funny enough, an O2 CD drive |
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jammed into a Sun 411 case). And that booted fine on both my Octane and Indy. |
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|
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"Invalid Argument" from mount could mean a wide array of things (yay for Unix's |
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legacy of non-descriptive, ambiguous errors). The process that occurs on an SGI |
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bootcd for us is a rather complex one: |
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|
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1. arcload boots from the DVh partition of the CD |
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(yes, these CDs have partitions) |
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2. arcload finds and boots a kernel |
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3. kernel loads, and executes /init in an embedded initramfs file linked |
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into the kernel |
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4. /init does some prep work, and launches `getdvhoff` to scan the CD |
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for the offset of the next partition (where / lives), and passes a |
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number representing this offset back to `losetup`. |
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5. losetup uses this number to "point" /dev/loop0 at this offset, which |
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effectively makes /dev/loop0 a block device with data on it. |
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6. mount tries to mount /dev/loop0 and pivot_root into the real Gentoo |
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filesystem. |
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|
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|
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Quite likely, step #5 might've failed somewheres along the line. The offset has |
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to be exact to the bit, so maybe something got whacked in the burn and the |
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detected offset is invalid. Hard to say without more information. Thus, when |
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it got to step #6, boom. |
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|
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I'd try re-burning the disk at a slower speed, use only CD-R's of decent quality |
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(TDK, Memorex, Sony, Ricoh/Ritek, etc,.. brands), and use cdrecord (or whatever |
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license-unencumbered version is out there. stupid license wars). A few people |
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reported getting it to work with a windows burn tool, but we have little data on |
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that, thus why cdrecord is the suggested tool. |
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|
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Mostly, you were able to read the kernel into memory, which is ~8MB. It's |
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possible the disc you burned was good enough to get those 8MB off to boot the |
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kernel, but when it went looking for the meat, it got denied and pwned. |
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--Kumba |
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|
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-- |
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Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead |
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|
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"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands |
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do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." --Elrond |
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-- |
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