[gentoo-dev] RC6 Boot ISO reports + info [kind of long]

[Donny Davies]

Hi,devs

I'm wondering whether some friendly gentoo'ers with SCSI setups won't
comment on our new self-booting build ISO system?

I can report no success on a Symbios 53c810 controller, with the SCSI
BIOS on the MB, in combination with an Yamaha SCSI writer. Sounds
like a funny setup I know, but it can work. I seem to have forgotten which
Linux distribution's bootable installation CD it was that actually worked
for this particular setup. I must try to rediscover it to see what is different!

The error is:
isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
isolinux: Found something at drive = F0
isolinux: Looks like it might be right, continuing...
isolinux: Disk Error 00 drive F0
Boot failed: press a key to retry

For what it's worth all of our build iso's boot perfectly and work fine on
any type of IDE equipment I've thrown at them so far, its just the SCSI
that needs some tweaking. This isn't just a case of adding support for the
53c810 controller or something else simple/similar is it drobbins?

Also, I would note that the old 1.0_rc4_pre2 ISO I have here, boots
successfully on my SCSI setup. I think that one is based on a different
boot system with grub though. Further, I would note that the RC6 ISOS
get the SCSI BIOS to indicate that a bootable CDROM has been found
and that it will use "Non-Emulation Mode". I have found Windows NT/2000
CDROMS to give the same notice, but they can boot OK. I have also
noticed that Windows 9x and the RC4 CD get the SCSI BIOS to say it
has found a bootable CDROM which will "Emulate CD-ROM as Floppy
Drive A:". I can use those CD's will boot with. To sum that up, I believe
that this "emulation mode" business/option, appears to have no effect on
whether the CD will boot or not, I guess its just some option in making
a bootable CDROM. Hmm I should read-up some on this isolinux stuff :)

Ideally you could send in a quick "hey it works on this" report to the
development mailing list, or any difficulties you are experiencing so that
we can establish where the problem hardware/devices are, and make
the required fixes. I do realise that many of us are fully capable of
"working around" the problem, and adjusting locally. I do this myself
sometimes. Usually that means we dont speak up, but instead just merrily
cruise along. Alas it would be better to file a report if something could
be improved, because that way nobody gets left behind, or stuck with
a CD that wont boot for them. Mind you, I'm not saying we can make
a CD that will boot on every system, probably not. It would be going
a long way however into putting together a solid, robust, bootable build
ISO if we can manage to cover cases like mine, and possibly some other
obscure ones/combinations. With the way things are going, I wouldn't be
surprised to see this solved very soon.

As another sidenote, my particular SCSI driver has amusingly enough
been the default pre-selected host driver inside of the kernel menuconfig
target/program for all of 2.4.x and 2.2.x series that I can remember.
Although I'm certain they decided upon that choice in order to minimise
CONFIG_SCSI_SYM53C8XX and CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C8XX
confusion. This seems to be a pretty important chip to be supported,
as theres tonnes of cards based on it. And then theres the fact that this
is a woodchip.. *rimshot*. But I digress..

You may find the newest revisions of the (non)bootable ;-) ISO image in:
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/snapshots/build/ix86-linux-gnu
As of now the latest one is "build-ix86-1.0_rc6-r9.iso". It is ~16MB long.

The master plan I gather, is to eventually come up with a solid self-booting
build CD that contains a chroot'able build environment, along with a recent
snapshot of the portage tree, and a good selection of distfiles (probably at
least enough to do `emerge system`). With some good bug reports and more
testing this can be a reality very soon indeed!

Another tidbit I'd like to explore, is the possibility of using the -multi option
to cdrecord when writing the ISO. Whilst I've been experimenting with it
I have noticed that unfortunately you dont seem to be able to use the newest
session you've written to the disc, only the first one you write is usable for
booting. So, you can write for example the -r9 release of the build ISO to
CD, then tomorrow you could write the -r10 release, both using the -multi
option, but only the first session is accessible/usable.. at least for booting
anyway. I gather one needs software support in the running OS before one
can access the later sessions. I'd really like to be able to add additional
releases of the build ISO to a CD, in multiple sessions, and have the newest
one be available for booting the computer. Does somebody know more
about this?

So please *do* tell us whats up with our bootable build CD system and
your hardware. How's it working for you?

Cheers,
Donny (aka woodchip)