Subject: Re: "couldn't determine symbol block size"
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Steven Sartorius <ssartor@bellatlantic.net>
List: port-hpcmips
Date: 02/21/2007 05:25:12
Sorry, nothing about your particular problem but one FWIW...

I was unable to fit 3.0 (now 3.1) on a 340M microdrive without  
getting rid of stuff I wanted to keep (i.e. compiler, X  
environment).  This was with a 15M dos partition on the drive (not  
totally sure, box isn't in front of me now).  In any case, I ended up  
buying a 1G microdrive off of Ebay and now I have plenty of room.

Steve

On Feb 21, 2007, at 01:40, der Mouse wrote:

> I recently got a WorkPad z50 off a friend.  He had 2.0.2 installed on
> it, on an IBM 340M microdrive.  It's perhaps important to note that
> this install was set up to use hpcboot rather than pbsdboot.
>
> As part of my learning my way around, I tried to set up 3.1.  I had
> been able to boot with root on nfs without any problem, so I went to
> set 3.1 up that way.  I set up the NFS root directory, but when I  
> tried
> to put the 3.1 kernel on the msdos filesystem on the microdrive, it
> wouldn't fit.
>
> Now, there are multiple ways around this.  But what I tried to do was
> to resize the partitions on the thing, to enlarge the msdos  
> filesystem.
> So I put the microdrive in a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter and popped it into
> another machine, dumped an image of the contents so I'd have a backup,
> repartitioned, restored the ffs contents, destroyed the msdos
> partition's contents, then put it in the mahcine and let it remake the
> msdos filesystem.  Back into the other machine, mount (with -l, to be
> sure), and copy everything over.
>
> But now, when I try to boot from it, hpcboot pops up an alert box
> titled "WARNING", saying "couldn't determine symbol block size", and
> the boot wedges with the blue bar somewhere around 80-90 percent of  
> the
> way across the screen; I have to hard-reset the machine (by removing
> the battery) to recover - the reset button on the back makes it shut
> down, but it won't turn back on until I pull the battery.
>
> Now, I know 2.0.2 is not the most current; it's not even the most
> current release.  But I can't figure out why there's a difference
> between the microdrive before I started messing with it and now.  This
> means there's something I don't understand, and things I don't
> understand are practically guaranteed to turn into problems,  
> usually at
> about the most inconvenient time they can.
>
> Any idea what's up?
>
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