easy questions for Fedora gurus

[Scott Douglass]

1. when I install new kernel via yum update, do I need to rebuild the
initrd-*.img that came with that kernel in order for the /dev/root disk
label to be known? Right now, I can't boot any new kernel as the
"/dev/root" device specified in olpc.fth can not be found by the new
kernel.

2. how do I make the timezone stick? I;ve told the system that I'm using
America/New_York, but the system clock is always giving me the time in
GMT. The file /etc/syscofing/clock says that it's not used... and the
GUI version of system-config-date fails to run on my XO (it starts up,
policy kit asks me to authenticate, then it just vanishes...)

Thanks,

Scott

[Scott Douglass]

On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 22:01 -0500, Scott Douglass wrote:
>  1. when I install new kernel via yum update, do I need to rebuild
> the
>  initrd-*.img that came with that kernel in order for the /dev/root disk
>  label to be known? Right now, I can't boot any new kernel as the
>  "/dev/root" device specified in olpc.fth can not be found by the new
>  kernel. 
Whoops, meant to write: /dev/root device specified in /etc/fstab, not
olpc.fth.

[Chris Ball]

Hi Scott,

>  1. when I install new kernel via yum update, do I need to rebuild
>  the initrd-*.img that came with that kernel in order for the
>  /dev/root disk label to be known? Right now, I can't boot any new
>  kernel as the "/dev/root" device specified in olpc.fth can not be
>  found by the new kernel. 
It's because "jffs2" and "cafe_nand" are missing from those
initrds.
I think if we specified those in /etc/modprobe.conf, they'd be read by
mkinitrd at kernel install time and bundled into the initrd.  If you
put them in that file before installing the new kernel, does that work?

(If so, please send us a patch to our kickstart file that writes them
there.)

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb(a)laptop.org&gt;

[Scott Douglass]

On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 22:26 -0500, Chris Ball wrote:
>  Hi Scott,
>  
>     > 1. when I install new kernel via yum update, do I need to rebuild
>     > the initrd-*.img that came with that kernel in order for the
>     > /dev/root disk label to be known? Right now, I can't boot any new
>     > kernel as the "/dev/root" device specified in olpc.fth can not be
>     > found by the new kernel.
>  
>  It's because "jffs2" and "cafe_nand" are missing from those
> initrds.
>  I think if we specified those in /etc/modprobe.conf, they'd be read by
>  mkinitrd at kernel install time and bundled into the initrd.  If you
>  put them in that file before installing the new kernel, does that work?
>  
>  (If so, please send us a patch to our kickstart file that writes them
>  there.)
>  
>  - Chris. 
I added to /etc/modprobe.conf:

alias cafe_nand cafe_nand
alias jffs2 jffs2

I removed then installed the latest kernel via RPM (after fixing
RPM...). The ram disk created is different in size from the one created
when /etc/modprobe.conf was empty.

I copied the ram disk to /boot/initrdX.img, and copied the kernel
to /boot/vmlinuzX

I edited /boot/olpc.fth to use these items.

Rebooted.

Looks good, no error about /dev/root, but stops booting (cursor is
flashing, but nothing is happening...) after printing:

"input: OLPC HGPK ALPS HGPK
as /devices/platform/i8042/serial/input/input2"

So, something more is needed I guess.

I did try adding a bunch more modules (mtd, reed_solomon, zlib_compress,
etc.) in /etc/modprobe.conf and rebuilding the ram disk myself as well.
That produced a slightly different in size ram disk but ended up with
the same result as above.

[Paul Fox]

scott wrote:
>  2. how do I make the timezone stick? I;ve told the system that
> I'm using 
the magic file is /etc/localtime, which should be a copy of, or a
symlink to, an appropriate timezone file from /usr/share/zoneinfo.
i'd start my search there.

paul

>  America/New_York, but the system clock is always giving me the time
> in
>  GMT. The file /etc/syscofing/clock says that it's not used... and the
>  GUI version of system-config-date fails to run on my XO (it starts up,
>  policy kit asks me to authenticate, then it just vanishes...)
>  
>  Thanks,
>  
>  Scott
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  Fedora-olpc-list mailing list
>  Fedora-olpc-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list 
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf(a)laptop.org

[Scott Douglass]

On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 23:13 -0500, pgf(a)laptop.org wrote:
>  scott wrote:
>   > 2. how do I make the timezone stick? I;ve told the system that I'm using
>  
>  the magic file is /etc/localtime, which should be a copy of, or a
>  symlink to, an appropriate timezone file from /usr/share/zoneinfo.
>  i'd start my search there.
>  
>  paul
>  
>   > America/New_York, but the system clock is always giving me the time in
>   > GMT. The file /etc/syscofing/clock says that it's not used... and the
>   > GUI version of system-config-date fails to run on my XO (it starts up,
>   > policy kit asks me to authenticate, then it just vanishes...) 
Paul, thanks for the zone info! The file /etc/localtime was definitely
not the same file as /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York.

However, the ultimate solution was to use the "hwclock" command. I've
never had to use that in years of using RedHat/Fedora Linux because it
is invoked by ntpd,ntpdate, and tools for setting the system time.

Force the clock to accept it is not in Greenwich (might not be
necessary...):

>  hwclock --localtime 
Set the date and time to be correct local time using "date", then:

>  hwclock --systohc 
My clock is correct after re-booting, yeah!