Working boot/root
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I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root' and press return, it seems to hang.
However, I don't know if this is the current boot/root. Is this a known or a fixed problem? If so, can anyone point me at a more recent image I could try?
I also have an unrelated question:
I have an ancient Toshiba laptop, with an 8086 processor an 1MB of memory. I'm currently using it as a serial terminal with DOS. I'd like to try something a little more sophisticated, and ELKS is a good choice. Unfortunately, it's floppy drive is duff and its 20MB hard drive is a laptop-sized MFM disc with an interface like nothing on Earth. As I don't want to remove DOS, as I have no way of getting it back on, I'd like to shrink the DOS partition to 5MB or so and use the rest for ELKS. This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that runs on an 8086 and (b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any suggestions?
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Quoted 6 lines
I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root' and press return, it seems to hang.
However, I don't know if this is the current boot/root. Is this a known or a fixed problem? If so, can anyone point me at a more recent image I could try?
Have you tried the 720k image or seperate boot/root disks? I know those are always updated.
Quoted 1 line
I have an ancient Toshiba laptop, with an 8086 processor an 1MB of memory.
Cool, I've never seen an 8086 machine with a full meg or ram before!
Quoted 4 lines
no way of getting it back on, I'd like to shrink the DOS partition to 5MB or so and use the rest for ELKS. This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that runs on an 8086 and (b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any suggestions?
There was a DOS program that came on my old Linux cd way back when that shrunk FAT partitions, might be just what you're after, but I forget the name. I suppose there's a chance it had 80286+ code in it too, don't know. Maybe Loadlin would work with ELKS, don't know if it would be happy with a non-Linux kernal. Maybe you should just replace the floppy, it might be tough to actually get ELKS stuff to/from the laptop without one.
Dan
Quoted 4 lines · David Given
I recently tried the 1.44MB bootable floppy image from the archive. It boots fine and presents me with a login prompt; unfortunately, when I type 'root' and press return, it seems to hang.
Hmm, there was an issue with 0.1.1, or one of the pre-releases at some point. Can I suggest you try the following:
1) Download EDE which is an installer, this will install elks and seems to work well. This also uses a bootloader.
2) Build a kernel from latest cvs, and dd it to a disk, then use the root disk from your image file. Let me know if that works.
Quoted 4 lines
I also have an unrelated question:
This means I need (a) a FIPS equivalent that
runs on an 8086 and
You might want to try the fips which came with early versions of minix,
http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/CD-ROM-2.0/DOSUTILS/FIPS/
This may work though YMMV.
Quoted 1 line
(b) something that will boot an ELKS kernel from DOS. Any
Hmm, once you have it shrunk you may want to go straight to EDE which installs a bootloader (Bootkit) that allows you to load both elks/dos. There are MS-DOS versions of bootkit to allow you to install.
http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/linux-8086-list/2002/06/1788.html
You may want to experiment with fips then this in Bochs or something first.
Paul
Quoted 2 lines
2) Build a kernel from latest cvs, and dd it to a disk, then use the root disk from your image file. Let me know if that works.
No, that doesn't work.
It does, however, fail in a different way.
On bochs, it causes the screen to go blank when it tries to load init. This may be a problem with bochs, or it's doing something screwy which causes bochs to blank the screen. On real hardware (yes, I resurrected my XT compatible), it fails
sys_execve("/bin/init",args,18) => 65528
and then
panic: Unable to get timer
I don't know if this is right, but is "panic: Unable to get timer" caused by the CPU jumping to address 0 and attempting to boot again? (I grepped for this string and saw some such comment on the release notes)
All I want is to kernel I can boot off myself; this seems too difficult. It may be that my root image is faulty (although it's a stock one), so I may try to replace that.
Maybe I can use the combo disc as a root disc?
Mark