FC3 on external PCMCIA/USB disk (success)

[Michael J Gruber]

Hi everyone,

I'm using an external USB disk, with the USB 2.0 controller being a 
PCMCIA card. FC3 installed happily on this disk, alas it didn't boot 
quite as happily from it. (Of course, I have grub on a /boot partition 
of the internal IDE drive.)

Earlier Fedora versions came with the pcinitrd script of pcmcia-cs which 
facilitated the creation of initrds for booting with PCMCIA, FC3 doesn't 
have it. Documentation one gets from googling mostly refers to 2.4 
kernels, where one has to hack /linuxrc to include cardmgr...

After experimenting a while with hacking /linuxrc and /init, I found out 
that mkinitrd (which comes with FC3) already does the job, as long as 
one is aware of the timing problem: PCMCIA and USB need some time to 
come up before devices will be recognized.

Also, minitrd's option --with-usb always puts usb modules before modules 
you specify with --with=, which is a bad thing in this case. So, just 
put the usb modules after the pcmcia modules, using --with=usb-storage 
etc. mkinitrd includes a "sleep 5" after loading usb-storage, and this 
does the trick.

If enough people are interested I'll write up some more details.

Michael

[Milos Leskanic]

Michael J Gruber wrote:
>  Hi everyone,
>  
>  I'm using an external USB disk, with the USB 2.0 controller being a
>  PCMCIA card. FC3 installed happily on this disk, alas it didn't boot
>  quite as happily from it. (Of course, I have grub on a /boot partition
>  of the internal IDE drive.)
>  
>  Earlier Fedora versions came with the pcinitrd script of pcmcia-cs which
>  facilitated the creation of initrds for booting with PCMCIA, FC3 doesn't
>  have it. Documentation one gets from googling mostly refers to 2.4
>  kernels, where one has to hack /linuxrc to include cardmgr...
>  
>  After experimenting a while with hacking /linuxrc and /init, I found out
>  that mkinitrd (which comes with FC3) already does the job, as long as
>  one is aware of the timing problem: PCMCIA and USB need some time to
>  come up before devices will be recognized.
>  
>  Also, minitrd's option --with-usb always puts usb modules before modules
>  you specify with --with=, which is a bad thing in this case. So, just
>  put the usb modules after the pcmcia modules, using --with=usb-storage
>  etc. mkinitrd includes a "sleep 5" after loading usb-storage, and this
>  does the trick.
>  
>  If enough people are interested I'll write up some more details.
>  
>  Michael
>   
I'd be seriously interested - am trying to set up similar config (USB2
over PCMCIA) on FC4.

As a step 1, I tried to set machine up using built-in USB1.1 - for
unknown reason it doesn't work either. I'll elaborate a bit: Install
went flawlessly, FC4 sitting on external disk (/dev/sde1 as / plus
/dev/sde2 as swap, GRUB in MBR of external disk /dev/sde). Booted into
'linux rescue', mounted root partition and chrooted to it. Running
mkinitrd with following preloads: ehci-hcd, usb-storage, scsi_mod,
sd_mod. As it turns out later, FC4 puts "sleep 8" after usb-storage is
'insmodded'. Rebooting again, entering command-line mode of GRUB:

kernel vmlinuz-... ro root=/dev/sde1  should it be sde1 or only sde?
initrd initrd-usb.gz  customized initrd with above mentioned preloads
boot

For a while, everything looks fine - kernel uncompressed, USB storage
module registered; critical part: mkrootdev looks fine, but mount of
root FAILS with rc=6 (I believe I had rc=2 whilst using separate /boot
partition (have tried many variants of install)), kernel
(2.6.11-1.1369_FC4) spits out approx. 2 screens of garbage and machine
seems to hang. No idea why...

Questions in my mind: (i) what on the earth makes this not to boot
properly? Any missing preload? (ii) Once I make this work (if ever):
what needs to be preloaded for PCMCIA part? Or - maybe even better:
would it be possible to show relevant part of initrd script?

I'd be grateful for any hints, spent couple of days with no avail so far.

Thanks in advance,

Milos

[Milos Leskanic]

Milos Leskanic wrote:
>  Michael J Gruber wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I'm using an external USB disk, with the USB 2.0 controller being a
> > PCMCIA card. FC3 installed happily on this disk, alas it didn't boot
> > quite as happily from it. (Of course, I have grub on a /boot partition
> > of the internal IDE drive.)
> >
> > Earlier Fedora versions came with the pcinitrd script of pcmcia-cs which
> > facilitated the creation of initrds for booting with PCMCIA, FC3 doesn't
> > have it. Documentation one gets from googling mostly refers to 2.4
> > kernels, where one has to hack /linuxrc to include cardmgr...
> >
> > After experimenting a while with hacking /linuxrc and /init, I found out
> > that mkinitrd (which comes with FC3) already does the job, as long as
> > one is aware of the timing problem: PCMCIA and USB need some time to
> > come up before devices will be recognized.
> >
> > Also, minitrd's option --with-usb always puts usb modules before modules
> > you specify with --with=, which is a bad thing in this case. So, just
> > put the usb modules after the pcmcia modules, using --with=usb-storage
> > etc. mkinitrd includes a "sleep 5" after loading usb-storage, and this
> > does the trick.
> >
> > If enough people are interested I'll write up some more details.
> >
> > Michael
> > 
Hi all,

self-replying below:

>  
>  I'd be seriously interested - am trying to set up similar config (USB2
>  over PCMCIA) on FC4.
>  
>  As a step 1, I tried to set machine up using built-in USB1.1 - for
>  unknown reason it doesn't work either. I'll elaborate a bit: Install
>  went flawlessly, FC4 sitting on external disk (/dev/sde1 as / plus
>  /dev/sde2 as swap, GRUB in MBR of external disk /dev/sde). Booted into
>  'linux rescue', mounted root partition and chrooted to it. Running
>  mkinitrd with following preloads: ehci-hcd, usb-storage, scsi_mod, 
Problem is in ehci which is designed for USB2.0 exclusively vs. USB1.1
port where disk was actually connected. After preloading ehci-hcd and
ohci-hcd, FC4 finally boots off USB1.1.

>  sd_mod. As it turns out later, FC4 puts "sleep 8" after
> usb-storage is
>  'insmodded'. Rebooting again, entering command-line mode of GRUB:
>  
>  kernel vmlinuz-... ro root=/dev/sde1  should it be sde1 or only sde?
>  initrd initrd-usb.gz  customized initrd with above mentioned preloads
>  boot
>  
>  For a while, everything looks fine - kernel uncompressed, USB storage
>  module registered; critical part: mkrootdev looks fine, but mount of
>  root FAILS with rc=6 (I believe I had rc=2 whilst using separate /boot
>  partition (have tried many variants of install)), kernel
>  (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4) spits out approx. 2 screens of garbage and machine
>  seems to hang. No idea why...
>  
>  Questions in my mind: (i) what on the earth makes this not to boot
>  properly? Any missing preload? (ii) Once I make this work (if ever):
>  what needs to be preloaded for PCMCIA part? Or - maybe even better:
>  would it be possible to show relevant part of initrd script? 
Haven't tried this so far, but does anyone know which modules will need
to be preloaded to get PCMCIA up prior to / partition gets mounted?

>  
>  I'd be grateful for any hints, spent couple of days with no avail so far.
>  
>  Thanks in advance,
>  
>  Milos
>   
Rgds,

Milos