Gentoo LiveCD 1.4 PPC does not include the sd_mod driver for scsi hard disk support (as far as I can tell). Boot messages find the MESH scsi controller but does not search for hard drives nor does it report them (ie no /dev/sda). AFter booting from BootX and arriving at the shell prompt the only accessible drives are the CDROM (/dev/sg0 or /dev/scd0) and /dev/sg1 (the sg_mod driver trying to access the HDD). I have prooven the Gentoo kernel to be at fault by booting various kernels from ppckernel.org and sourcemage.org and visually seeing the detection of sda and its partitions (sda1 etc). I can't use these kernels because of the lack of cloop.o support. I have no other PPC to compile a suitable replacement kernel and modules. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Booted kernel and intird from BootX 2.Logged on as root 3.mac-fdisk /dev/sda 4.ls /dev/sd* 5.dmesg 6.modprobe sd_mod 7.find / -iname sd_mod.o Actual Results: 3.device not found 4.file not found 5.No reference to sda or partitions 6.module not found 7.no items found Expected Results: dmesg would show hard drive information and partition information. Devfs would show /dev/sda as a valid device.
I can confirm this on a OldWorld PowerMac 7200 and any 1.4 LiveCD.
I'm reassigning this to Pieter since he is maintaining the livecd script.
The ppc 2004.0 kernel has support, but hasn't got module autoloading yet. Pass debug to the kernel, modprobe the module you need, and then exit the busybox shell to continue booting using the live environment. Reassigning to genkernel. Since this is a linuxrc issue. it should be possible to pass the device /dev category to look for with my new initrd. This is why automatic module loading is needed. Feature suggestion for catalyst: check out bootfrom argument in the ppc 2004.0 initrd.
Hmh, I'm reassigning this to the PPC team as genkernel does indeed support autoloading of modules - nobody's added any modules to the PPC configuration available in /usr/share/genkernel/ppc/modules_load and so this is more of a configuration problem - if somebody would like to make a list and attach it here I'd be happy to commit it in with the next Genkernel release.
There is module autoloading 'on demand' and 'forced' module autoloading. Genkernel does 'forced' module autoloading and prevents kmod from autoloading on demand. The problem with current 'forced' module autoloading is that: - different machines require different modules (thermal management, network, scsi cards,...). I could go modprobe all modules on every system, but that will take up much memory and might lead to more kernel oopses. - genkernel force-loads the same modules for all kernels I'm ok with genkernel pruning the non-storage modules for the initrd. But the remaining modules should be loaded on demand if possible. This being said, does anyone know what configurations ppckernel.org and sourcemage are using? Could you have a look at gentoo/src/genkernel_bradmssw/ppc/ and see whether the G4 configuration (also compatible with G3) has the necessary options for /dev/sda detection enabled?
2004.2 has the necessary drivers. Please test.
Can't test due to bug 49549.
