Special kernel settings

This board posts about running linux on your webdt366
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darrenmason
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Special kernel settings

Post by darrenmason »

Hi,

Has anyone that has compiled a recent kernel for webdt 366 used any special settings.

I am having a problem that the internal disk will not mount as part of the init script hence causing remainder of bootup to not work.

I have one machine running weborbiter for linuxmce which uses a cutdown debian installation. I have noticed that it sees the harddrive as /dev/hda1. I had thought that 2.6 kernels treat all hard drives as /dev/sdXX so was wondering if there is a special kernel config option needed to get the hard disk recognised.

I have looked at the config for the debian install, puppy and dsl which all boot fine but I can't see what it is.

Regards
Darren
quotaholic
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Re: Special kernel settings

Post by quotaholic »

Hey Darren,


Afik no one here has compiled a special kernel, yet. Its on the to do list for myself but time has not been permitting of late. That and I have never compiled a kernel. A good way to see what mods get pulled in is to hook a usb drive up and throw debian lenny in the drive. I cant help but think about how the MCE videos start with praise to one particular video camera and think that it was used to capture the init verbosity. This takes place again when debian looks at the hardware and auto selects mods and packages to pull from the disk to support the installation. Not sure if that will tell you what you need to know but it should give you some stuff to work with. I wonder if the unique dom memory could be the culprit in the hda vs sda?

Welcome to WebDT!

quotaholic
darrenmason
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Re: Special kernel settings

Post by darrenmason »

quotaholic wrote: Hey Darren,


Afik no one here has compiled a special kernel, yet. Its on the to do list for myself but time has not been permitting of late. That and I have never compiled a kernel. A good way to see what mods get pulled in is to hook a usb drive up and throw debian lenny in the drive. I cant help but think about how the MCE videos start with praise to one particular video camera and think that it was used to capture the init verbosity. This takes place again when debian looks at the hardware and auto selects mods and packages to pull from the disk to support the installation. Not sure if that will tell you what you need to know but it should give you some stuff to work with. I wonder if the unique dom memory could be the culprit in the hda vs sda?
Will take a look at the videos again and look further into the DOM memory stuff.

That said I did make some progression last night..

Background first: I am trying to get Android running on the WebDT 366 and am using android-x86 port as a basis. I think this was actually suggested on an old thread in this forum at some time.

To date I have tried the released builds from the android-x86 project with not much success.
I have downloaded the code and rebuilt both the android code and the kernel it uses - using a modified kernel config based on what I saw in the Debian Lenny kernel config used in the linuxMCE weborbiter image.
All efforts gave me the same problem - which is when the android init script attempts to mount the booted storage it fails to mount it. Thinking this was a problem with the usb drive I built a bootable image straight onto the internal drive in the webdt - but this still had the same issue.

However, last night I noticed that android-x86 had done another build which now uses the 2.0 android source so I thought I would give it a try.
Don't know if it was to do with this build but I was also modifying the root= settings for the startup and eventually managed to get android booting.
Still a long way to go - but at least it managed to mount the USB drive it was booting from and run in live configuration.
Will now work on getting it installed to the disk and rebuilding the kernel to support the hardware.


Welcome to WebDT!

quotaholic
Thanks, been lurking for ages....
quotaholic
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Re: Special kernel settings

Post by quotaholic »

My apologies for not noticing you. You have been quiet. I am hopeful that you will be successful with Android. There are several newer kernels that are supported by both the hardware and touchscreen. Downloading penmount touchscreen drivers for various distributions and looking at the README will map which ones are safe to work with. We have the DMC9000 serial penmount board.
darrenmason
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Re: Special kernel settings

Post by darrenmason »

Progressing, albeit slowly.

The latest x86 build definately has changes that allowed the USB drive to be recognised by the init script so that is good as a live image can run. It doesn't see the Internal drive though so install doesn't work.
I have therefore been trying to get a kernel built that includes more support for WebDT hardware.
I am struggling with the build system when I setup a customised device.

Will keep on it ... just thought I would give an update.

btw: Runs quite slowly (almost not usable) from the USB live image. Hopefully this improves with customised kernel and local install.

regards
Darren
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