I tried building realtime linux kernel on an older IBM PC (500MHz) with RH
Linux 9. Got Linux on OK, and seemingly rtlinux; however, when I went to
boot rtlinux, it  died in the boot process with:

ext2-FS ide0(3,2) couldn't mount because of unsupported optimal features (4)
.
Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:02.

What's this all about?

A couple of possibilities. I specified ext3 (menuconfig). I may
have never done that in any other installations. In another step("make
modules modules_install"), "-depmod -a" failed. The latter generally gets me
into trouble when I do this install. I replaced it with "/sbin/depmod -a"
and re-entered the make. It seemed happy with that.

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
--
"When you think about it, electricity is
really just organized lightning." -- George Carlin

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

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On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:25:57 +0000, W. Watson wrote:

> I tried building realtime linux kernel on an older IBM PC (500MHz) with RH
> Linux 9. Got Linux on OK, and seemingly rtlinux; however, when I went to
> boot rtlinux, it  died in the boot process with:
>
> ext2-FS ide0(3,2) couldn't mount because of unsupported optimal features (
4).
> Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:02.
>
> What's this all about?
>
> A couple of possibilities. I specified ext3 (menuconfig). I may
> have never done that in any other installations. In another step("make
> modules modules_install"), "-depmod -a" failed. The latter generally gets 
me
> into trouble when I do this install. I replaced it with "/sbin/depmod -a"
> and re-entered the make. It seemed happy with that.
>
>           Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>               (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>                Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
>
>           Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>               (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>                Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

Which kernel did you try and build? Which version of GCC? RH9 is very old
and it uses an obsolete version of GCC. I'm pretty sure that the recent
Linux kernels require a current version of GCC (if I'm wrong about this
someone on this newsgroup is sure to let us know). Finally how much RAM to
you have on that box? I have an old laptop that only has 384M in it. I get
that same depmod failed error on the laptop when I try to build a kernel
on it. I'm using FC4 and I've had zero problems building kernels on any of
my other boxes, all of which have at least a gigabyte of RAM. I never had
any problem building a kernel on the laptop when it had 512M of RAM (one
256M DIMM failed so I replaced it with a 128M DIMM that I had laying
around which is why it's down to 384), which is why I suspect that it's a
memory problem.

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General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:25:57 +0000, W. Watson wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> Which kernel did you try and build? Which version of GCC? RH9 is very old
> and it uses an obsolete version of GCC. I'm pretty sure that the recent
> Linux kernels require a current version of GCC (if I'm wrong about this
> someone on this newsgroup is sure to let us know). Finally how much RAM to
> you have on that box? I have an old laptop that only has 384M in it. I get
> that same depmod failed error on the laptop when I try to build a kernel
> on it. I'm using FC4 and I've had zero problems building kernels on any of
> my other boxes, all of which have at least a gigabyte of RAM. I never had
> any problem building a kernel on the laptop when it had 512M of RAM (one
> 256M DIMM failed so I replaced it with a 128M DIMM that I had laying
> around which is why it's down to 384), which is why I suspect that it's a
> memory problem.
>
128MB memory!!
P3 processor
13G HD
5122KB Cache
Linux 2.4.20-6
GCC 3.2.2-5
You may be right about the memory. That might be a bit too low, although
plain Linux holds together.


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
--
"When you think about it, electricity is
really just organized lightning." -- George Carlin

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:08:05 +0000, W. Watson wrote:

> General Schvantzkoph wrote: 
> 128MB memory!!
> P3 processor
> 13G HD
> 5122KB Cache
> Linux 2.4.20-6
> GCC 3.2.2-5
> You may be right about the memory. That might be a bit too low, although
> plain Linux holds together.
>
>
>           Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>               (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>                Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

MY old laptop runs FC4 with Gnome fine, the only thing that doesn't
work is building a kernel. I'm not absolutely convinced of my memory
theory, I get the same error even when I'm running the machine without X
windows. It could be a PIII issue, all of my current machines are A64s.
It's hard to believe that the kernel build has a dependence on the
processor being > PIII but it sure seems that way.

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General Schvantzkoph wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:08:05 +0000, W. Watson wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> MY old laptop runs FC4 with Gnome fine, the only thing that doesn't
> work is building a kernel. I'm not absolutely convinced of my memory
> theory, I get the same error even when I'm running the machine without X
> windows. It could be a PIII issue, all of my current machines are A64s.
> It's hard to believe that the kernel build has a dependence on the
> processor being > PIII but it sure seems that way.
>
Well, I've been snookered by this before. I personally have a 1.5GHz machine
that I tried installing earlier versions of RH Linux on, 6.3, 7, whatever,
and they all failed. However, 9 went on fine, and I was able to put rtlinux
on it. Here's the so-called base installation for rtlinux with RHL 9:
1.1 Installation of Red Hat Linux 9.0
=====================================
* CD-Check
* Language Selection
English (English)
* Keyboard
German (latin w/ no deadkeys)
* Mouse Configuration
2 Button Mouse (PS/2)
* Upgrade Examine
Perform a new Red Hat Linux installation
* Installation Type
Workstation
* Disk Partitioning Setup
Automatically partition
* Automatic Partitioning
Remove all partitions on this system
* Boot Loader Configuration
Use LILO as the boot loader
* Network Configuration
- Edit Interface eth0
no DHCP
Active on boot
IP 192.168.0.11
NM 255.255.255.0
- Hostname RTL02
- GW 192.168.0.1
* Firewall Configuration
No firewall
* Additional Language Support
English (USA)
* Time Zone Selection
- Location
Europe/Vienna
System clock uses UTC
- UTC Offset
UTC
* Set Root Password
* Workstation Defaults
Accept the current package list
* About to Install
* ...
* Boot Diskette Creation
Yes
* Graphical Interface (X) Configuration
Skip X configuration
* Reboot


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
--
"When you think about it, electricity is
really just organized lightning." -- George Carlin

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

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On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:37:08 +0000, W. Watson wrote:

> General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> 
> Well, I've been snookered by this before. I personally have a 1.5GHz machi
ne
> that I tried installing earlier versions of RH Linux on, 6.3, 7, whatever,
> and they all failed. However, 9 went on fine, and I was able to put rtlinu
x
> on it. Here's the so-called base installation for rtlinux with RHL 9:
> 1.1 Installation of Red Hat Linux 9.0
> =====================================
> * CD-Check
> * Language Selection
> 	English (English)
> * Keyboard
> 	German (latin w/ no deadkeys)
> * Mouse Configuration
> 	2 Button Mouse (PS/2)
> * Upgrade Examine
> 	Perform a new Red Hat Linux installation
> * Installation Type
> 	Workstation
> * Disk Partitioning Setup
> 	Automatically partition
> * Automatic Partitioning
> 	Remove all partitions on this system
> * Boot Loader Configuration
> 	Use LILO as the boot loader
> * Network Configuration
>   - Edit Interface eth0
> 	no DHCP
> 	Active on boot
> 	IP 192.168.0.11
> 	NM 255.255.255.0
>   - Hostname RTL02
>   - GW 192.168.0.1
> * Firewall Configuration
> 	No firewall
> * Additional Language Support
> 	English (USA)
> * Time Zone Selection
>   - Location
> 	Europe/Vienna
> 	System clock uses UTC
>   - UTC Offset
> 	UTC
> * Set Root Password
> * Workstation Defaults
> 	Accept the current package list
> * About to Install
> * ...
> * Boot Diskette Creation
> 	Yes
> * Graphical Interface (X) Configuration
> 	Skip X configuration
> * Reboot
>
>
>           Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>               (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>                Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

Why are you using an obsolete distribution? RH9 hasn't been supported for
years. Install Fedora Core 4 or CentOS 4. It might not solve the kernel
install problem but that's a lot less important because you'll have a
recent kernel. In the case of Fedora they always have the current kernel,
which is 2.6.15.x at the moment. CentOS is a clone of Redhat Enterprise
Linux so the kernel version is a patched version of an older kernel, I
think it's 2.6.11.x but it might be a .12. In both cases the kernel is
four years newer then what's in RH9.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

>
> Why are you using an obsolete distribution? RH9 hasn't been supported for
> years. Install Fedora Core 4 or CentOS 4. It might not solve the kernel
> install problem but that's a lot less important because you'll have a
> recent kernel. In the case of Fedora they always have the current kernel,
> which is 2.6.15.x at the moment. CentOS is a clone of Redhat Enterprise
> Linux so the kernel version is a patched version of an older kernel, I
> think it's 2.6.11.x but it might be a .12. In both cases the kernel is
> four years newer then what's in RH9.
>
>
It was recommended by the rtlinux folks as one of the three distributions
that were 'certified'. I would not be using it at all if rtlinux hadn't been
needed for the application I'm running. The app people and other users of
the app actually use RH Linux 6.3, 7 and maybe 8 on vintage machines.
Otherwise, I have virtually no interest in realtime linux, or even linux for
that matter.  Basically, I have enough problems with it under RHL 9 that I
wouldn't even attempt another distribution or version-don't need more
problems (see below).

I once tried to put it on Fedora Core 3 (4?), and had to back out of it for
some reason. A LUG guy helped with it. We were trying to solve a serious
install problem after my machine had failed months earlier. We took a brief
shot at Fedora. The problem was finally solved, while using RHL 9 instead,
and that's what I now have again on my own machine.

My partner in running his site had a college student install the app. He
used Gentoo. I guess if one is knowledgeable about these things, you can
just about put it anywhere. I'm trying to install it on my partner's
machine, actually now a spare that I have. His computer went up in flames
about 2 months ago.

I now have a clue as to something that might help. The rtlinux producers
omitted "make install" as the final step of the How-to procedure. I'm going
to try it shortly and see what happens. Stay tuned.


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
--
"When you think about it, electricity is
really just organized lightning." -- George Carlin

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

One problem solved, and another occurred. I executed make install, and that
solved the kernel panic problem. I booted up successfully and installed the
application. Then I tried to execute itbut the computer hung. Maybe I should
have booted again before trying to execute.  I then powered down/up. Now the
boot has problems with the filesystem. I tried getting by it, but kept getti
ng:

Contains fs with errors. Check forced.
Inode xxxx has illegal blocks.
UNEXPECTED CONSISTENCY. RUN fsck MANUALLY
(i.e., w/o -A or -P)

So do I enter just fsck at the command prompt? I'm logged on as root.

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
--
"When you think about it, electricity is
really just organized lightning." -- George Carlin

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"W. Watson" <wolf_tracks@invalid.com> writes:
>One problem solved, and another occurred. I executed make install, and that
>solved the kernel panic problem. I booted up successfully and installed the
>application. Then I tried to execute itbut the computer hung. Maybe I shoul
d
>have booted again before trying to execute.  I then powered down/up. Now th
e
>boot has problems with the filesystem. I tried getting by it, but kept gett
ing:
>
>Contains fs with errors. Check forced.
>Inode xxxx has illegal blocks.
>UNEXPECTED CONSISTENCY. RUN fsck MANUALLY
>(i.e., w/o -A or -P)
>
>So do I enter just fsck at the command prompt? I'm logged on as root.
>
I think you're most likely screwed.   While ext2 is generally forward
compatible, it is seldom backward compatible.  If the ext2 filesystem
code in your RTlinux is older than that in the distro you installed,
or Rtlinux only supports ext2 and you installed with ext3, you'll get
this kind of error.   In particular, downgrading[*] from FC4 to, say,
RH8 will have many fsck errors because RH8 doesn't know about all
the extended attribute stuff that FC4 will have included.

Now, that said, the fsck on RH8 will generally just cleanup the
newer stuff without losing the actual file and directory contents.
Usually.   YMMV.

scott

[*] or even sharing an ext2 fs between them.

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On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:07:49 GMT, "W. Watson"
<wolf_tracks@invalid.com> wrote:

>One problem solved, and another occurred. I executed make install, and that
>solved the kernel panic problem. I booted up successfully and installed the
>application. Then I tried to execute itbut the computer hung. Maybe I shoul
d
>have booted again before trying to execute.  I then powered down/up. Now th
e
>boot has problems with the filesystem. I tried getting by it, but kept gett
ing:
>
>Contains fs with errors. Check forced.
>Inode xxxx has illegal blocks.
>UNEXPECTED CONSISTENCY. RUN fsck MANUALLY
>(i.e., w/o -A or -P)
>
>So do I enter just fsck at the command prompt? I'm logged on as root.
>
>          Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>              (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>               Obz Site:  39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

AFAIK that's what the message means.  It's what I have generally done
when I have gotten that message after a hard reboot, and it has
generally worked.  Fsck will list a bunch of specific errors and ask
whether to fix them, and I generally just choose "yes," and if the
hardware isn't hosed or anything, that usually gets the system working
again.  I don't know about any claim that "you're screwed"; I haven't
used rtlinux, but RH9 supports ext3 and ext3 can generally recover
pretty well from what I've seen.

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