Marvell/Yukon (msk) and NFS root issues and some newbie questions

[Ossi Väänänen]

Hello all,

just joined the list and noticed somebody else wrote a mail about
Marvell ethernet adapters, so here's some more.

I'm kind of new to NetBSD and have some questions. I installed NetBSD
4.0.1 on a NFS+DHCP+TFTP server to be used by a Fujitsu Lifebook P1610
laptop that has a Marvell/Yukon SysKonnekt ethernet adapter. I ran into
some problems with it and would be delighted if anyone knew how to fix them.

i) When the laptop has loaded the kernel from NFS and tries to mount the
root filesystem after probing device and stuff, something like
boot device: <unknown>
root device: [prompting for the root device...]
appears on the console. When I type msk0 and hit return to the rest of
the questions, the laptop gets an IP again from DHCP and mounts the root
filesystem and continues to boot.

ii) after i), kernel asks where the /sbin/init is and the prompt
defaults to /sbin/init, and pressing enter makes the machine continue
and really start the init process... why? Because of i)?

iii) When the machine is up and running, networking works really oddly.
The laptop can't ping anything, including self. DNS lookups work.
SSH:ing to another machine in the same private subnet works. Ftp doesn't
work (which is sad since pkg_add doesn't work either). Routing table is
OK and the laptop is pingable by other computers in the same subnet.

I noticed that in the kernel config (GENERIC) there's a line that says
'config netbsd root on ? type ?', so if I change that to 'config netbsd
root on msk0 type nfs' and recompile, I should get rid of the root
device prompt while booting?

Also, assuming that some development is going on with the NetBSD kernel
and the msk driver all the time, would it be a good idea to troubleshoot
the msk driver problems by using the newest 5.x kernel? Can I do that
with the rest of the OS and binaries being 4.x?

Any help would be appreciated! Some time ago I was doing some kernel and
userland networking software hacking on some other BSD (a proprietary OS
forked from FreeBSD 2.x) at work, and I'm a bit excited to learn some
NetBSD now.

regards
ossi v

[Manuel Bouyer]

Post by Ossi Väänänen
Hello all,
just joined the list and noticed somebody else wrote a mail about
Marvell ethernet adapters, so here's some more.
I'm kind of new to NetBSD and have some questions. I installed NetBSD
4.0.1 on a NFS+DHCP+TFTP server to be used by a Fujitsu Lifebook P1610
laptop that has a Marvell/Yukon SysKonnekt ethernet adapter. I ran into
some problems with it and would be delighted if anyone knew how to fix them.
i) When the laptop has loaded the kernel from NFS and tries to mount the
root filesystem after probing device and stuff, something like
boot device: <unknown>
root device: [prompting for the root device...]
appears on the console. When I type msk0 and hit return to the rest of
the questions, the laptop gets an IP again from DHCP and mounts the root
filesystem and continues to boot.

I guess because the kernel doesn't know it was loaded over NFS ...

Post by Ossi Väänänen
ii) after i), kernel asks where the /sbin/init is and the prompt
defaults to /sbin/init, and pressing enter makes the machine continue
and really start the init process... why? Because of i)?

probably

Post by Ossi Väänänen
iii) When the machine is up and running, networking works really oddly.
The laptop can't ping anything, including self. DNS lookups work.
SSH:ing to another machine in the same private subnet works. Ftp doesn't
work (which is sad since pkg_add doesn't work either). Routing table is
OK and the laptop is pingable by other computers in the same subnet.
I noticed that in the kernel config (GENERIC) there's a line that says
'config netbsd root on ? type ?', so if I change that to 'config netbsd
root on msk0 type nfs' and recompile, I should get rid of the root
device prompt while booting?

Yes

Post by Ossi Väänänen
Also, assuming that some development is going on with the NetBSD kernel
and the msk driver all the time, would it be a good idea to troubleshoot
the msk driver problems by using the newest 5.x kernel? Can I do that
with the rest of the OS and binaries being 4.x?

Yes, it should work