[Cbe-oss-dev] Cannot use petitboot to boot from USB stick

[John Frankish]

-----Original Message-----
From: cbe-oss-dev-bounces+frankish=dubai.oilfield.slb.com at ozlabs.org [mailto:cbe-oss-dev-bounces+frankish=dubai.oilfield.slb.com at ozlabs.org] On Behalf Of Geoff Levand
Sent: 02 July, 2009 20:50
To: John Frankish
Cc: cbe-oss-dev at ozlabs.org
Subject: Re: [Cbe-oss-dev] Cannot use petitboot to boot from USB stick

On 07/02/2009 01:31 AM, John Frankish wrote:
> Using petitboot and pdaXrom-ng-ps3-20090417 (http://wiki.pdaxrom.org/downloads/PS3/livecd) copied to a usb stick:
>
> Petitboot recognizes the usb stick, but when I try to boot, I get "no bootable rootfs found" and the boot process stops. According to http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=11551 this should work.
>
> Is this an issue of the usb stick changing device name during the boot process perhaps? If so, is there a way to identify the usb stick by label or uuid that petitboot and the kernel boot process would recognize?

I noticed that that thread at ps2dev.org uses a very old
version of petitboot (from http://ozlabs.org/).  That
version is not supported.  Please ask for someone to test
with the latest petitboot from here:

  http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/geoff/cell/ps3-petitboot/

>> thanks - tested with the latest version of petitboot, but same result.
>> I guess I need to find something known to boot from usb stick on a ps3 - any ideas?

This seem to be a problem with pdaXrom.  I don't know about
pdaXrom, but I guess that message, "no bootable rootfs found"
comes from it.  In that case, petitboot has already done
its work of loading the pdaXrom kernel image and transferring
control to it.

The problem could be due to the USB device name, but that
would be due to the pdaXrom startup, and not related to
petitboot.

-Geoff

_______________________________________________
After some more thought, I wonder if the problem is that the usb stick has not had time to "settle" and the boot process cannot find it - I saw this problem on an x86 boot, which was fixed by the kernel parameter "root delay=10" and on an x86 distro, which was fixed by "waitusb=5".

Now I just have to figure out how to pass one of these parameters on the petitboot line...