[ELDK] ELDK 4.2 beta test

[Johan Borkhuis]

I did some tests with ELDK 4.2. There are a few things that are not 
going very well.

The most serious problem is with generating a new kernel. I am trying to 
build a kernel for ppc_85xx, consisting of linux-2.6.14 and the Motorola 
MVME patch set, which I installed in the ppc_85xx/usr/src/linux 
directory. Using ELDK 4.1 this is no problem, and the kernel works as 
expected. When compiling using ELDK 4.2 however the kernel does not 
start: After the boot loader the system stays extremely quiet. The 
configuration itself is identical. I can run the kernel compiled with 
ELDK 4.1 together with the ELDK 4.2 NFS root.

Next is a problem with NFS. When starting up the system using the 
default settings mounting of NFS filesystems does not work (NFS root is 
mounted, so NFS is working). I get the following message during init:
Starting rpcbind: [  OK  ]
Mounting NFS filesystems:  mount.nfs: rpc.statd is not running but is 
required for remote locking
   Either use "-o nolocks" to keep locks local, or start statd.
[FAILED]
When I use the -o nolock option with mount I can mount the filesystems.
When looking at the state of rpc.statd I see the following:
-bash-3.2# service nfslock status
rpc.statd dead but pid file exists
I also cannot (re)start rpc.statd manually. In /var/log/messages I see 
the following error:
Jan 18 10:08:20 MVME3100-198 rpc.statd[1092]: Version 1.1.0 Starting
Jan 18 10:08:20 MVME3100-198 rpc.statd[1092]: unable to register (statd, 
1, udp)

One other thing is related to our setup. We are using one NFS host and 
several embedded target boards. I do not want the embedded boards to 
share /etc and /var/log, as I want to have the possibility to create 
separate configurations in /etc and logfiles in /var/log for each 
target. So I setup a minimal nfsroot per target, containing /etc, /bin/, 
/sbin, /dev, /lib and /var. During the init phase the main (shared) NFS 
share is mounted. The target NFS root contains symbolic links into this 
share for /home, /usr, etc.
With 4.1 this setup worked, but my first impression of 4.2 is that this 
is not going to work, due to some libraries (libtirpc.so.1 and maybe 
others) in /usr/lib that are needed by the RPC and NFS client.

Something that I also noted when using ELDK 4.1 is that, when I use NTP 
the ksoftirqd/0 task is starting to get full load. It is running at a 
nice level, but still consuming all remaining processor time.

Kind regards,
    Johan Borkhuis

-- 
Johan Borkhuis                                  Dutch Space BV
email:        j.borkhuis at dutchspace.nl          Newtonweg 1
phone:        071-5245788                       Leiden
fax:          071-5245499                       The Netherlands