Kernel startup problems on p630

[Dave Engebretsen]

Hi -

VAKKALANKA RAO Sridhar wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to boot a p630 with a 2.4.21-pre4 kernel. At the console, the output indicates that the "start()" function in "<kernel-source>/arch/ppc64/boot/zImage.c" has successfully completed. Immediately after that, I get the output:
...
>         (translate ok) returning from prom_init
>
> The screen freezes for several minutes with this display and the machine simply restarts. When it restarts, it reboots with the originally installed AIX 5.1 operating system.
>
> (1) A google search revealed that IBM is aware of this problem for the p670 & p690, but their suggestions were not helpful.

The point in the boot process where you see this message is a difficult
spot to draw any conclusions on what the actual error is.  There is
quite a bit of code that runs after this message, and before the next
one.  Therefore it is not clear to me what might be occuring.  The only
problem I am aware of on a p630 involving firmware levels requires you
to be running in LPAR mode, and I do not belive this would be the
symptom.

> (2) The very same binary, "zImage.initrd", works fine for someone who possesses the very same machine (p630). This person had his firmware level at a lower level than mine. Yet, when I requested our IBM support to restore the older firmware, they refused stating that it wouldn't help at all and that there was no way to access old firmware levels.
>
> Can anyone give me some advise?

We are presently resyncing up to the most recent 2.4.21 level; hopefully
that will be done in a day or two.  We can make sure to test this port
on a p630 to see that that platform nominally works.  If there is a
firmware level issue here, this may not help, but at least we will have
a more recent code base to debug from.

Dave.

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