booting restored kernel on new hardware, am I screwed or what?
Bob Bailin
"John Hiemenz" <he...@ujoint.org> wrote in message
news:9s8s2j$ko4$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net...
>
> Here a bit of history:
>
> I have (had) SCO OS5 Enterprise running on a Compaq Proliant 1500, dual
P166,
> 98MB RAM, and a 16GB RAID-5 disk using the Smart-2/E Raid controller.
Daily
> backups of entire system made with BackupEdge.
>
> I have another system, P200, 98MB RAM, and about 4GB IDE disk space across
> two disks. Had a set of Recovery-2 (BackupEdge) disks made for this system
at
> one time when it ran SCO. It had been collecting dust for quite some time
> now.
>
> My Compaq Proliant went belly up. I mean it just gives freaky memory
errors
> even after swapping out RAM with known good memory, (#201 and #203 errors
at
> boot) If I try booting the SmartStart CD, I may get a 'Parity Check
2 -System
> SIMM Memory' message and the system freezes, or it may not give me a
message
> but then will error and tell me to enter the location of command.com,
because
> the copy it is loading from the CD is 'missing or corrupted'. I get this
> same error on 4 different SmartStart CD's that have work perfectly in the
> past, and still do on other Compaq systems, just not this one. I have
> replaced the system board, the processor board, the RAID card, the network
> card, the memory. I still get these errors. (I haven't swapped out the
video
> card yet, it has an ATI Mach32/E in there)
>
> Giving up for a bit on the Proliant, I try to restore my data to the the
P200
> machine. RecoverEdge lets me create paritions and I get everything
restored.
> Reboot the system. Hit enter at the boot prompt, at hardware ID screen,
get
> kernel panic. Duh, I think. It's trying to load the ida driver for the
root
> disk, I bet. I reboot and try kernel.install, it hangs at 'F ahainit'. I
> obviously have no kernel images on the tape/disk that use ide for the root
> controller.
>
> I'm wondering how I can get this kernel rebuilt to work on an ide system.
Is
> there any way known? My best idea at this point is to do the following:
>
> -grab a kernel with ide for root disk
> -e-boot my P200 and get this new kernel onto the hard disk
> -try booting the P200 again.
>
> Any other thoughts or ideas are welcomed. Jokes and ridicule are not,
well..
> let me have my coffee first and we'll see ...
If you were using OpenServer 5.0.4 (or a later version) and BackupEdge
01.01.08 or a later version, the RecoverEdge program that accompanies it
allows you to use BTLD to change the hard disk adapter on a system with
minimal effort, providing you enabled BTLD support when you created your
RecoverEdge diskettes. Even though the wd driver is not a SCSI driver, it
acts like one and might just work in this situation.
Bela Lubkin
> OpenServer 5.0.6, BackupoEdge 01.01.08
>
> When creating the boot/root disk set, I ran RecoverEdge and let it do it's
> thing. I didn't do anything other than insert the disk(s) when it told me
> to.
>
> Tryed btld from the command prompt and I get a out of memory error (huh? I
> got 98MB in here, mebbe I'll have to spec that in the boot string as well)
The program that does the boot-time linking of BTLDs is a small-model
8086 program. It has some very limited knowledge of 32-bit address
space for purposes of copying the actual kernel code up there. It does
the _linking_ in 8086 mode. Specifically, the kernel and BTLD objects'
symbol tables get loaded into the low 1MB of memory. It's quite easy
for it to run out of space.
Check BIOS setup: many modern machines have settings which control
whether 512KB or 640KB of the low 1MB are available. You won't be able
to BTLD anything if it's set to 512KB. At 640KB, you at least have a
chance.
> I've gotten the system booted from a kernel build on an ide system, but I
> need to now try to figure out how to tell my system the root disk is ide, not
> ida, and then I should be able to relink a new kernel and boot and be happy
> again. Until then... I'm still muttering ...
Rather than all this, what you might want to do is start a new, fresh
install on the replacement machine -- starting from the OS distribution
CD. (Or possibly from SmartStart if these are Compaqs, like I seem to
remember from the previous messages.) Anyway, using whatever is the
correct procedure for the replacement machine, do a new install. Then
restore your data from the old system, being careful not to restore the
OS portions. Finally, if necessary, restore the OS portions into a
subdirectory. You can use the restored old OS as a reference for things
like kernel parameters you had changed.
>Bela<
Tony Lawrence
> Rather than all this, what you might want to do is start a new, fresh
> install on the replacement machine -- starting from the OS distribution
> CD. (Or possibly from SmartStart if these are Compaqs, like I seem to
> remember from the previous messages.) Anyway, using whatever is the
> correct procedure for the replacement machine, do a new install. Then
> restore your data from the old system, being careful not to restore the
> OS portions. Finally, if necessary, restore the OS portions into a
> subdirectory. You can use the restored old OS as a reference for things
> like kernel parameters you had changed.
There are more detailed instructions and helpful scripts for this
procedure at http://pcunix.com/Unixart/upgrades.html
--
Tony Lawrence
SCO/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: http://pcunix.com