Dave's plg3.math (Itanium) Red Hat Linux 7.1 Kernel Update Recipe

This is still a very preliminary draft document.

Please send any suggestions for improvement or requests for clarification to "dlgawley@math.uwaterloo.ca".

Things you should know before the install starts:

1. Check the version of mod utilities (lsmod)

Setting Up the Source Tree

1. Don't use the RedHat sources. Get the kernel from "http://www.kernel.org/".
2. Get the ai64 patch file for the kernel from "ftp://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ports/ia64/v2.4/".
3. Unpack the kernel and then patch it
   • cd /usr/source/linux/kernel
   • bzcat ftp/linux-2.4.18.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
   • cd linux
   • bzcat ../ftp/linux-2.4.18-ia64-020226.bz2 | patch -p1
   • patch < ../UWpatches/hp-kernel.patch
     you have to tell patch to patch file "arch/ia64/kernel/sys_ia64.c".

Building and Installing a Kenel

1. make mrproper
   Make sure everything is clean for the new kernel build
2. cp /usr/src/configs/plg3.current  .config
   copy previous version of config file to local directory
3. make oldconfig
4. make dep
5. make vmlinux
6. make modules
7. make modules_install
8. make boot
9. make compressed
10. cp vmlinux /boot/efi/vmlinux-2.4.18
11. cp vmlinux.gz /boot/efi/vmlinuz-2.4.18
12. ln -s efi/vmlinux-2.4.18 /boot
13. ln -s efi/vmlinuz-2.4.18 /boot
14. cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.18
15. mkinitrd -v -f /boot/efi/initrd-2.4.18.img 2.4.18
16. Update /boot/efi/elilo.conf
    1. Make sure that the "image=" line referes to the new /boot/vmlinux<version> kernel file.
    2. Make sure that the "initrd=" line referes to the new "/boot/initrd-<version>.img"
    3. You DON'T run "elilo" to install any changes since "/boot/efi/lilo.conf" is read at boottime by elilo.
17. reboot

Solved Problems I Was Having on an HP RX46100

1. Trying to boot the new kernel resulted in a continuous error loop. The messages was "ia64_log_get: No SAL error record available for type 3."

   Upgrading the firmware to v101 (see "ftp://ftp.hpl.hp.com/pub/linux-ia64/rx4610-fw99.tar.gz". solved this.

Problems I'm Still Having on an HP RX46100

System now reaches the point of trying to mount the root filessytem and then I get these series of messages:

Mounting root filesystem
mount: error 6 mounting ext2
pivotroot: pivot_root (/ssyroot, /sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
Freeing unused kernel memory: 368 kB freed
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.