Phil_54 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 09, 2023 12:33 pm
@rockedge
@wiak
Thanks for responses.
I re-downloaded rc6.1. I put contents in SDcard folder and iso in Ventoy.
In sdcard folder I ran wd_grubconfig, copied appropriate stanza into menu.lst. Boot hung on initrd line. Waited 5 minutes, nothing.
In ventoy usb stick I tried ventoy selection, which got me to the klv boot selection screen (small success). Tried a couple of the options. In each case I get a memory insufficent error, so I edit kernel line with mem=1952M. ( I have to do this for some distros and puppies both in ventoy and menu.lst. I don´t know why some manage without this). Anyway, waited 2 minutes and blank screen only.
I also tried to find it in the SG2D iso on ventoy usb but couldn´t see it.
I then reformatted my now empty SSD 16Gb (ext4). I put the extracted rc 6.1 folder there, ran wd_grubconfig and put stanza into sdcard menu.lst.
Boot hung as before.
Therefore, as suspected, my rig is saying get a new laptop. My heart says, hey, this baby still has a battery capacity of 3 hours after 10 years daily use. Get a minimal low ram distro and be happy. Don´t produce laptop waste unnecessarily. 
@wiak gave me instructions to use a hybrid on this link viewtopic.php?p=77743#p77743, which uses debian kernel beta25. So If I can continue with this until RC.6.1 evolves into full release, then I may request a new bespoke initrd.gz for that release if I still can´t launch it anywhere.
Thank you so much for your time. Will do any more test variations if requested.
Could you please post your menu.lst stanza, Phil (or check with below in case you see a difference that might work for you). For some reason I think wd_grubconfig gets it wrong when I tried doing it on sdcard. Neither wd_grubconfig (nor grubconfig.txt) is part of the boot process actual though - it is just a 'helper' script... or supposed to be...
After a lot of fluffing about, having forgotten how to install onto sdcards... I finally have KLV rc6.1 booting successfully from an sdcard plugged into my old 2008 HP Elitebook 2530p (which has no hard drive and a pretty fussy, ancient SD card slot interface).
I created the install in a very roundabout way. Having been a DebianDog user for years I remembered it was pretty easy to get grub4dos bootloader onto any device using FossaDog's frugal installer, so to save my brain further what I did was to download FossaDog and put it in the BOOTISOS folder of my Ventoy usb stick, booted it that way on my main daily laptop and then plugged in the sdcard via a usb card reader (so acting like a usb stick for install purposes).
Thus, from Fossadog frugal install program I installed grub4dos bootloader to the MBR of the sdcard, which automatically generated a menu.lst (albeit for FossaDog booting, which I wasn't going to also put on the sdcard).
Still in Fossadog frugal install program I selected to use ext4 without a journal and pressed the button to start up gparted, from which I deleted the existing partition, and chose ext4 format before recreating it, gave it a LABEL "sdcard" and then set the boot flag on. At least that's what I remember I did. Of course you don't need Fossadog for all this; just that I was familiar with it...
I then copied all the KLV rc6.1 contents onto / of the sdcard
(EDIT: By the way, at that stage I am very careful to copy the vmlinuz first and sync;sync to make sure definitely written to the sdcard, and then I individually copy initrd.gz and w_init similarly followed by sync;sync before copying all the larger files involved in the install. May not be relevant or important - bit of black magic, but I've had strange result in the past with even some usb stick installs having file unfound type errors, certainly on the old machines I used back then, unless vmlinuz copied early like that immediately after partitioning and format; I wanted success so didn't risk just copying all files over in one go).
and put the following into the grub4dos menu.lst:
Code: Select all
title sda1 UUID
find --set-root uuid () 193601b7-5241-4f12-9233-bd5349964009
kernel /vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=193601b7-5241-4f12-9233-bd5349964009=/ w_changes=RAM2
initrd /initrd.gz
title sda1 LABEL sdcard
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /grub_config.txt
kernel /vmlinuz w_bootfrom=LABEL=sdcard=/ w_changes=RAM2
initrd /initrd.gz
Finally, I took the sdcard out of the card reader and plugged it into the SD card slot interface on my old HP 2530p and pressed the ON switch, and it booted fine!!! (Note there was a longish delay of around 30 seconds between it finding vmlinuz and loading the initrd and then a black screen of around 20 seconds prior to desktop finally appearing - that happens with some kernels, on some machines - not all, for reasons unknown to me - but patience and it moved on and continued the successful boot thereafter...). So at least I know rc6 does indeed have the necessary sdcard driver modules now and works on my old machine at least (with the default supplied Void Linux kernel/modules).
I'll have to check the wd_grubconfig script to see why it gave me wrong stanzas (it included /sda1 in all the entries, which it shouldn't have).
I'm now going to try putting the KLV files into a subdirectory (/KLV) and adjust my menu.lst accordingly. I didn't do that for my first try because I remember this old machine sd card slot not working when I tried using installs in subdirectory back in the past, but I may simply have made errors back then (or the old sd driver interface driver simply doesn't work with lower level subdirectory usage). I will report back in an EDIT shortly.
EDIT: No, it did indeed not work when I instead put all the files in a subdirectory when using an sdcard slot interface on this old machine (I get an Error 2: Bad file or directory type). Might on the machines of others - could just be my sdcard interface BIOS code is pretty simplistic. Boots fine if all the KLV files put on / directory of the sdcard though (I don't copy the boot/ directory just in case some grub configs in there mess things up - though that's unlikely I think).
Your original post @Phil_54 certainly proved essential since sdcard booting would not have worked on any machine with original rc6 release since the necessary modules were definitely missing. Pity if rc6.1 continues not to boot from sdcard for you - it is now capable in terms of sdcard driver support so if not working then probably a different issue. However, my approach when something doesn't work on a computer is to suspect a simple error on my own part or suchlike - one simple mistake and nothing works of course; that is the frustration of computing. Hence I keep trying and trying again until I have exhausted any chance of ever succeeding; strangely enough it is just as I am definitely about to finally give up that my last attempt might work... luck involved for sure.