From: ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Help: bad kernel Date: 11 Feb 1993 00:28:44 -0500
In article <728775257.AA28556@remote.halcyon.com>, Larry.Mulcahy@f918.n104.z1.fidonet.org (Larry Mulcahy) writes:
> I downloaded the full SLS release January 20th (Linux 0.99.pl2-55). It
> installed without a hitch. Everything works fine except when I try to
> make a new kernel. The make ( make dep; make clean; make disk ) runs
> to
> completion without errors, but when I try to boot Linux from the new
> floppy, it prints the `Loading...' message as usual then goes into an
> infinite loop of printing:
>
> AX:020F
> BX:5C00
> CX:0E01
> DX:0100.
> @X:8000
>
> It keeps repeating these five lines until I give it the 3-finger
> salute.
>
> I searched the source code for the place where it prints this but
> couldn't find it (cd /linux; find . -name "*.c" -exec grep DX {} \;
> -print).
>
> Does anyone know what the problem is? I suspect it has something to do
> with determining what kind of video to use. With the default SLS
> kernel, when I reboot it display `EGAc' in the upper right but the bad
> kernels don't get this far.
>
Nope nope nope, it's got nothing to do with video mode selection. These
messages come from the boot loader and indicate that it's having trouble
reading the floppy. I've had this kind of error happen to me only once and it
turned out to have been due to the fact the the floppy I was using
(a 3.5" 1.44meg Dysan disk) had a media error somewhere around track 24.
I was stumped for a while becaus the disk was brand new, and I naively assumed
that this meant there couldn't be any hard errors on it already. Silly me. :)
I tried a different floppy (a 720K one this time -- was all I had left) and
it worked like a charm.
Anyway, since you say the kernel compiled correctly, that rules out software
troubles, and you did manage to get the stuff installed in the first place, so
that rules out a problem with your floppy drive (if the installation disk
booted, than this one should too). I suggest you toss the floppy you're using
now and try another one. Try a couple in fact: you could have a bad batch.
Oh, by the way, the boot loader is an assembly language program, so you'd
have to search for files ending in .S rather than .c in order to find the
source of the error messages. I don't have the sources loaded just now
(haven't got the room to spare) but I think you'll find what you're looking
for somewhere in /linux/boot.
Lastly, you don't have to do a 'make disk' again if you don't want to. Just
format a new floppy and type 'cat Image > /dev/fd0' (if you're running tcsh,
try 'cat Image >> /dev/fd0'). You can use dd too, if you like, but this way
is faster. :) Hope this helps.
-Bill
> ... lmulcahy@nyx.cs.du.edu, Larry.Mulcahy@f918.n104.z1.fidonet.org
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