[gentoo-catalyst] HPPA catalyst liveCD won't boot

[Derek Davis]

I'm trying to make an HPPA live CD using catalyst, but it seems that
nothing is working correctly for me. The main problem that I'm running
into now is that when I try to boot, palo says that it can't find any
32-bit kernels. I've even gone so far as to grab the kernel right from
the working Gentoo liveCD, and I still get the same error, so I'm
figuring that my problem is either how I'm making the iso or how I'm
running palo on the iso, but both of those commands I pulled right from
catalyst.

So here's the summary. I'm using catalyst version 2.0.6 and palo
1.5_pre20040515. I have a directory with initrd, vmlinux, vmlinux64 and
livecd in it, as well as the kernels and initrd in a subdirectory called
boot, just in case. boot also contains iplboot and palo.conf. palo.conf
is as follows:

--commandline=0/vmlinux initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc
looptype=squashfs loop=/image.loop
--bootloader=boot/iplboot
--ramdisk=boot/initrd

In order to make the ISO, I run:

mkisofs -R -l -J  -V "My LiveCD 5.0 HPPA" -o /root/My_LiveCD_HPPA.iso
/var/tmp/catalyst/builds/default/livecd-stage2-hppa1.1-5.0/

Then, from within the directory livecd-stage2-hppa1.1-5.0, I run:

palo -C /root/My_LiveCD_HPPA.iso -f boot/palo.conf

which results in:

palo version 1.14 root@hake Sun Mar  4 20:59:31 Local time zone must be
set--see zic manual page 2007
ipl: addr 226455552 size 36864 entry 0x0
 ko 0x0 ksz 0 k64o 0x0 k64sz 0 rdo 0 rdsz 0
<>
ipl: addr 226455552 size 36864 entry 0x0
 ko 0x0 ksz 0 k64o 0x0 k64sz 0 rdo 204414976 rdsz 858774
<0/vmlinux initrd=initrd root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc  looptype=squashfs
loop=/image.loop>

I then burn the ISO using cdrecord, and boot on an HP k series machine.
When I tell it to boot from the CD, it shows me the same config that I
specified in palo.conf, but when I tell it to continue booting, it says
that I've chosen the kernel I specified, but then that it can't find any
32-bit kernels. It then returns to the prompt to edit the palo.conf
details.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this might be happening? In case
it's relevant, catalyst actually failed in many ways to make this CD
before this point. For instance, mksquashfs would hang every time and in
the same spot. Even when I created a directory with a single file in it
and try to make a squashfs, mqsquashfs would hang at 100% and never
create the result. Also, the way that catalyst would execute palo would
fail, because it was looking for boot/palo.conf, but catalyst wasn't
running palo from within a directory that contained boot/palo.conf. Even
compiling the default hppa kernel when using the 2007.0 stage file and
portage snapshot failed with compile errors.  I've worked around those
problems for now, but this last one has me stumped.

I've googled for this problem, and even looked a bit in the palo source
code, but haven't found anything helpful yet.

Sorry for the lengthy message. Hopefully this provides enough info for
someone to see the problem. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Derek