While attempting to install the latest stable (on SPARC) kernel (gentoo-sources-2.6.17-r8) on a Netra X1 I ran into the following problem. Whenever I attempt to boot over the network I receive one of the error messages listed below: IDPROM: Warning, unknown format type! Illegal Instruction Memory Address not Aligned Data Access Exception Fast Instruction Access MMU Miss The error message can be changed by compiling a random kernel component in or out to change the size of the generated kernel. All kernels I have tried have been less than 3MB, some less than 2.5MB. I then tried installing every available version of gentoo-sources back to 2.6.14-r7 with the same result. At this point I moved to testing vanilla-sources, unfortunately with no improvement. Kernel versions 2.6.13-r5 and earlier all boot fine. This led me to believe that the issue was probably introduced in 2.6.14. After scanning through the changelog for that version I have found the following commit: commit bff06d552240ba7f5b49482a4865871d7bc03dc2 Author: David S. Miller Date: Thu Sep 22 20:11:33 2005 -0700 [SPARC64]: Rewrite bootup sequence. Instead of all of this cpu-specific code to remap the kernel to the correct location, use portable firmware calls to do this instead. Signed-off-by: David S. Miller Seems like more than a coincidence to me... After much searching of the web I have found that the following architectures are affected: Sun Netra X1 (UltraSPARC-IIe 400MHz) Sun Fire V240 Sun Blade 2500 Using OBP versions 4.0.5, 4.3.2, 4.5.9 and 4.17.1. Should I file this directly with the kernel maintainers?
Sorry, should have added that this is NOT related to the similar looking SILO bug. This occurs when net-booting too.
One of the sparc devels has a V240 running with recent kernels just fine. However this isn't related since the X1 is a completely different machine. And unfortunately we lack an X1 to help so it's best if you try upstream with the sparclinux mailing list.
Resolved in kernel 2.6.19-r2. I'm happy to call this closed if you guys are. :-)
We're happy if you're happy. 2.6.19-r2 won't go stable until we work around the qlogic firmware issue that 2.6.18+ got (removed firmware from the kernel, thus blade 1000/2000 machines can't boot from builtin disk). Though it's a genkernel issue and completely unrelated.
