# embedded gentoo - alix

## quickshiftin

hello all,

so i and a buddy are trying to get gentoo to run on an pc engines ALIX.3* board.

i think we are close.  we have grub attempting to boot but its dying; heres a snap of the text from the terminal

```
[    7.447973] CPU: AMD Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS stepping 02

[    7.468732] Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.

[    7.485030] Freeing SMP alternatives: 0k freed

[    7.498368] ACPI: Core revision 20070126

[    7.510269] ACPI Exception (tbxface-0629): AE_NO_ACPI_TABLES, While loading ]

[    7.541128] ACPI: Unable to load the System Description Tables

[    7.559194] net_namespace: 64 bytes

[    7.571963] NET: Registered protocol family 16
```

notes on the kernel configuration

AMD CS5535/CS5536 GPIO (Geode Companion Device)

compiled in (and theres another directly above or beneath it compiled in as well).

so some questions that arise are,

1. what is the entry going to be in /etc/fstab for the drive?

our thought is that it should be /dev/sdaX (where X is the partition number) since

aforementioned driver is in the sata driver category (i think).

anyway weve tried both /dev/hda3 and /dev/sda3 to no avail.

side note on the hd; its a compact flash card where the chipset has 'full ide emulation'

2.  what else could be going on preventing a successful boot, and what can we do

to troubleshoot?

normally we would just boot off the live cd and get the correct device nodes to put

in fstab, but we dont have that luxury here.  what weve done is built the system on

a separate box and tossed it onto a compact flash card that we then drop in the alix

board.

thx,

~quickshiftin

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## Maliwik

This is a pretty old post, but assuming you still haven't gotten it to work correctly, have you tried booting with acpi=off?

Also, if that isn't the problem, what's the output of fdisk -l?

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## quickshiftin

no we still havent gotten it to boot correctly.  we are moving on to other distros just to try and get it up..

openembedded is where we're at now, apparently thats taken much inspiration from gentoo.

i dont believe weve tried booting w/ acpi=off

regarding fdisk -l, well thats what i normally do on a pc, however the tough spot on this box is, we have no live cd.

otherwise that would be like the first thing we tried  :Very Happy: 

we're going to try and update the bios, there is supposedly a known bug or something that has been patched.  if we ever get it running,

at all, maybe we'll come back to gentoo.

~quickshifin`

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## Maliwik

So, for example, you have another working box.. Can you pop in the flash card in that box and then chroot into it?

You should be able to run fdisk -l if you can chroot to it.

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## quickshiftin

there are no working boxes atm.. this will be the first one.

~quickshiftin`

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## MrTuTu

hi,

I just buy an alix and compiled successfully a Gentoo for it.

I found a little HowTo that spares me a lot of "kernel panic" and other stuff for those exotic hardwares like the alix.

Here : http://blog.gangkast.nl/2008/06/gentoo-on-the-a.html

Perhaps will you find here 1-2 tips.

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## quickshiftin

yea, i stumbled into this one too.  pretty nice, but i couldnt get it to work.  problem was after emerge -K to the flash card, i try to chroot onto it only to discover its missing some key binaries.  then i copy them over from the host system.  finally i can chroot into this thing (flash card), but then there are some other problems (cant remember [been about a week since i messed w/ it]).

can i ask you, did you change your /etc/make.profile to and embedded one ?  if not, did you add some things to make.conf (or /etc/portage/package.use) like -X -kde, etc...

imo, the article is lacking on these points.

im going to try and follow the tiny gentoo article on the gentoo-wiki, and use one of the uclibc tarballs from the mirrors.  this should provide for a tighter embedded system than building one from the standard tarballs.

as well, im having trouble upgrading the firmware.  ive got free dos on a flash card and ive used install-mbr to place an mbr on the card, but the damn thing just will not boot on my device.  im thinking about getting the 128Mb card from pc-engines so i can just dd dorians magic image onto it and upgrade the bios.  hoping some of my problems are just from and older bios.

~quickshiftin`

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## MrTuTu

sorry for the late response.

I got some troubles too, but nothing that stopped me. This article doesn't give details, but helps not too lose time compiling.

Here are my details :

make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0  (no embedded profile : this is a i586 arch, perhaps i686. I didn't try).

/etc/portage/package.use : leer

/etc/portage/package.keywords : =net-analyzer/munin-1.3.4-r1 ~* (i like it instead cactus or "home stat scripts everywhere")

make.conf contains :

```

CFLAGS="-march=k6-2 -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu"

#FEATURES="buildpkg" # option used only in the virtual server

#MAKEOPTS="-j3" # option used only in the virtual server

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/ "

USE="pcntl posix bcmath xmlreader xsl xmlrpc ctype pcre session unicode geoip vhosts threads apache2 curl exif ftp gd imap ldap mysql mysqli -oci8 sockets sqlite tidy xml"
```

I compiled the system + apache2 + php5 + mysql + rtorrent + mldonkey + samba + munin + iptables + fail2ban + screen +...

I will write soon an article, as complete as possible and in english if possible (my first language is french).

If you want to spare compiling time, you can download my packages freshly compiled. I just made an update yesterday : http://hal9k.dyndns.info/sfv/?nav=alix_gentoo

I have an Alix 2C3. Do you have an Alix3c1 ? http://www.pcengines.ch/alix3c1.htm

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## quickshiftin

 *MrTuTu wrote:*   

> sorry for the late response.
> 
> I got some troubles too, but nothing that stopped me. This article doesn't give details, but helps not too lose time compiling.
> 
> Here are my details :
> ...

 

thanks for a solid reply.

well, first off, ive got the 2c2, second, i think my biggest problem is im running on an old bies.  just attampting

to upgrade that has been a nightmare.  ive tried a couple of techniques and theyve not worked.  sadly, ive decided to

'throw in the towel' and order the 128M card from dornier, that will accept his magic image.  hopefully - once ive got

the latest bios installed, booting to linux will become possible.

even if i get there, i think id like to follow the instructions from the tinyGentoo or gentoo embedded articles from the

gentoo wiki, using one of the uclibc base systems   :Very Happy: 

at any rate the card is in the mail so hopefully ill be able to take another crack at this soon...

~quickshiftin`

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