The 5680/8890 Gentoo Thread - Page 9

Well, the system finished stage 3 shortly after the post, and I have a 'working' kernel based on win4lin-sources.

That was about 3.5 hrs after the last post (first time in the kernel config menu, did the full readup). I'd have posted then but had to get some sleep and then off to work for the night (I expected it to be busy, and it was).

So at this point, I'm only certain that network is working correctly, though it boots reasonably clean. So off to get more info on getting the usb mouse and a minimal framebuffer to work (so I have smaller console text, 80x25 sux).

--TSK

EDIT/UPDATE: I think I messed up kernel config, as system is hanging on compiles to the point where I can only shut system down. Also getting 'Too many ticks' or other message to that effect. Think I got the kernel .config set Ok now, just going to try compiling again under the LiveCD since the system hung again during the actual compile...

Oh, the hang appears to be on disk side. Disk light is lit but no activity, as if it drops out. Any ideas?


EDIT/UPDATE 2: Good news is that it's definately kernel related, as emerging and re-compiling kernel and other things from LiveCD kernel is running just fine. So now it's just a matter of re-producing the proper set of 'stable' settings /w what I want to see.

I'll need to come back to this in a couple days since it's become very busy at work again and I'll need the sleep.

See y'all later,
--TSK

Just wanted to add a note on this thread letting people know that even though promises drivers are nowhere in sight, it is possible to install/boot Gentoo w/Kernel 2.6 on an 8890 with raid enabled!

Found this on the gentoo forums, and used it to emerge my system over the past few days.
http://tienstra4.flatnet.tudelft.nl/~gerte/gen2dmraid/

It works, and I have a xp/linux dual booting raid system. Yay!

My only problem now is that I can't seem to get rid of that pesky IDE=NODMA flag. Whenever I enable dma, even manually with hdparm, I get massive corruption when accessing the array.
I've tried manually passing it the ide config as specified in promise's driver howto (ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 ide2=0 ide3=0 ide4=0 ide5=0 ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0) but get the same results.
However, as long as I leave the nodma flag in place, the system is rock solid, if a little stuttery under heavy disk loads.

Thought I had it...

So I started installing 2005.0 on my 8890 last night - Just using a chunk off the end of my windows harddrive - my second harddrive failed, so I'm not using raid at the moment.

Anyway, I thought things were going to work great - I had it booting up with a 1600x1200 framebuffer, looking sweet - but it stopped; it couldnt mount /dev. Did I forget to compile something into the kernel? Anyone know? I kind of expect it has something to do with how I setup the processor - I do have hyperthreading support enabled in the kernel, and I remember there being issues with HT and linux so far. It also leave me at a shell of sorts after it fails during the bootup... so maybe I can recover... I'll post more details if I can't hack my way through it tonight, but I thought I'd see if this rang any bells with anyone here...

Ah-ha! Thanks - I think I realised what the problem is now. I used genkernel, but I wanted to customise the kernel a bit, so I ran "genkernel --menuconfig all" instead of "genkernel --udev all" I bet thats it...

Ok, actually it was even simpler. I didnt put 'udev' at the end of the append statement in lilo...

Hi all, popping back in from a bit of slumber 8890-wise (actually a discussion started elsewhere that referenced Gentoo ).

I'm happy to hear about the RAID driver thing, and may go for implementing it then. But first would need to get another 60@7200 or two 80@5400 (since I'd stripe), will need to look at what is cheaper. That will hold off the project for now.

But I will get a new LiveCD and try again from scratch. Hopefully things are better.

--TSK