Boot from PCMCIA flash disk?

[valuequest]

I have a very old laptop machine which (surprisingly) has a BIOS supporting booting from a PCMCIA device. I have put Plop Linux 4.2.2 onto an ext2 partition on a PCMCIA flash drive and am attempting to boot from it.

Outputs from the boot sequence after bzImage and initramfs.gz both load okay:

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pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket1: pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1
...
Searching for system files
At this point Plop Linux is unable to find its system files on the PCMCIA flash disk and the boot drops to a busybox shell.

I have tried to pass root=/dev/sdx and root=/dev/hdx to the kernel in boot options but no luck with either. I also tried to pass root=LABEL=ploplinux to the kernel in the boot options -- the boot output shows:

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Searching on LABEL
> Plop Linux not found on LABEL
(Side question: is something special necessary to get the kernel to parse root=LABEL=xxx properly?)

Or is this a matter of not having one or more modules needed in the initramfs.gz? Or in the libfs.sqfs?

[Elmar]

hello,

booting from pcmcia should work out of the box. its not required to add modules.

when you are in the busybox shell, run "dmesg". do you see additional infos about pcmcia?

are you able to boot from cd or usb to test a few things?

please try also the new 4.3.0-test2 version http://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux/test.html

best regards
elmar

[valuequest]

Thanks for the prompt support Elmar!

when you are in the busybox shell, run "dmesg". do you see additional infos about pcmcia?

With the same Plop Linux 4.2.2 installation media:

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# dmesg | grep pcmcia
<5> pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket1: pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1


are you able to boot from cd or usb to test a few things?

This laptop does not have a CDROM drive. It does have a USB port but I havent tried to make a USB media to boot Plop Linux yet as I really hoped to get this machine to boot Plop Linux from the PCMCIA flash disk.

please try also the new 4.3.0-test2 version

Okay I will try it. Just so I know what to look for is something different in this test version that might yield a different result to anything I've tried with the 4.2.2 installation so far?

[Elmar]

can you attach the whole dmesg output to a post? just mount an usb drive (maybe mount /dev/sda1 /mnt) or the internal hard disk from the busybox shell and store the output there "dmesg > /mnt/dmesg.txt"

Okay I will try it. Just so I know what to look for is something different in this test version that might yield a different result to anything I've tried with the 4.2.2 installation so far?

for me its easier to modify the test version than the old 4.2.2. all the develop files are extracted and ready on my machine.

[valuequest]

Okay here (attached) is the dmesg output from the Plop Linux 4.2.2 boot from the PCMCIA flash disk.

[valuequest]

{ post content deleted because content is attached to post above }

[Elmar]

did you format  the flash drive on the laptop, or on another computer?

[valuequest]

I used System Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/ 3.0.0 running on another computer to format a single ext2 partition onto PCMCIA flash disk, copy the Plop Linux files from the .iso into that partition, and then install syslinux 6.02 onto the partition using the same syslinux.cfg file copied from the Plop Linux 4.2.2 .iso.

Could the partitioning or formatting somehow be preventing Plop Linux from finding its system files in that ext2 partition? For what it may be worth I did use the expert menu in fdisk to move the start of the ext2 partition to sector 1 of the PCMCIA flash disk rather than the default sector 2048.

Does the Plop Linux initramfs assume that the system files are in .. RELATIVE to the syslinux directory as they are arranged on the .iso?

[Elmar]

it has nothing to do with the partitioning.

whats happening, when the busy shell is running and you unplug and replug the flash card? i need again the dmesg output after the replug.

what was the device node that you used when the  system rescue cd was booted to format the flash drive?