After reviewing Neutrino extensively myself, I sent a QNX Momentics NC
CD to a senior colleague of mine for evaluation. (This is the guy
who’ll have the final say as to whether we go with QNX for our next
project.)
Unfortunately, the install didn’t go smoothly. He says the machine
keeps rebooting at the very beginning of the process (see below). Can
anyone recommend a solution or workaround for this problem? (I fear
it’s VxWorks City for us if this guy can’t get QNX to run; he’s rather
annoyed.)
TIA,
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: “Bill” <bill@SPAMOFF.com>
To: “Dave Wolfe” <dwolfe@SPAMOFF.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 5:45 PM
Subject: QNX issues
Dave…
Computer is a Dell Dimension 8250:
2.4GHz
512MB
120GB HD
Symptoms:
When booting from CD it prints:
[hit esc for altboot]
then … across the screen.
When the “.” hits the right side, the computer reboots.
Making a boot floppy, then booting from it does exactly the
same thing.
Other than this, I have zero clue as to what’s going on…
there’s NO warning or error messages, etc.
The boot program prints a ‘.’ dot whenever it reads a block from the disk.
I don’t think it should print that many dots though. Are you (is he)
booting from CD of the hard drive after an attempted install?
It may represent either bad media or a faulty driver/controller
combination.
Try hitting the key when promped. That will boot an alternate OS
image that does NOT allempt to use DMA on the IDE controller.
After reviewing Neutrino extensively myself, I sent a QNX Momentics NC
CD to a senior colleague of mine for evaluation. (This is the guy
who’ll have the final say as to whether we go with QNX for our next
project.)
Unfortunately, the install didn’t go smoothly. He says the machine
keeps rebooting at the very beginning of the process (see below). Can
anyone recommend a solution or workaround for this problem? (I fear
it’s VxWorks City for us if this guy can’t get QNX to run; he’s rather
annoyed.)
Or, in case using nonstandard bootloader, the 512-byte bootsector file
isn’t matching that in corresponding qnx4 filesystem.
See
news:anhjbc$8ha$> 1@inn.qnx.com
nntp://inn.qnx.com/qdn.public.sysadmin/54
Other causes can happen; but certainly the bootloader couldn’t find
the /.boot .
kabe
Hmm. I’m curious, because System Commander is installed on the
machine; but, just to be clear: we haven’t gotten to the point of
actually installing anything yet. He has an 800 MB FAT partition as
the first partition on the HDD, followed by 100-some-odd GB in an NTFS
partition for WinXP, and then 6 GB of unpartitioned free space at the
end of the drive. We were hoping to install QNX in the 6 GB space at
the ‘top’ of the disk, but we haven’t gotten past the first line
printed out by the installer.
Is there something in this setup that could be causing the install CD to
boot improperly?
When booting from CD it prints:
so /.boot wasn’t a issue here.
Assuming disabling DMA doesn’t cure (“press ESC” for .altboot)
(I guess CDROM had no-DMA for default…)
Making a boot floppy, then booting from it does exactly the
same thing.
seems rather odd.
I guess the System Commander is doing something nasty;
Be sure the boot floppy is correct
(check it on your machine, then hand it to the colleague)
set the BIOS to boot from floppy
(not from System Commander in HDD, if this is the case)
As a rule of thumb you’re on your own when using
anything nonstandard (LILO, GRUB, MBM, whatever) during boot.
Now the above assumes that the trouble is that
bootloader couldn’t find the image file;
If the case is something AFTER the procnto is loaded, these won’t apply.
the first partition on the HDD, followed by 100-some-odd GB in an NTFS
partition for WinXP, and then 6 GB of unpartitioned free space at the
Gotcha:
Default installer can only allocate a Primary partition,
not a free space in Extended Partition, so
you may need to “truncate” the Extended partition in some way.
(can System Commander do this?)
It may not boot if installed beyond 137GB (INT13 28bit LBA limitation)
(currently this won’t apply as it seems 120GB)
–
kabe
I cant get 6.2 to install on Dimension 8250 either. I have a support agreement,
so I’ve logged a call. QNX is looking into it. We had a problem last year
with previous model Dells not booting 6.1, and we sent a machine to QNX for testing.
They found the Dell wierdness an put a fix for it in Patch A.
We will do the same with the 8250 if it cant be solved any other way.
By the way, 6.2 will install on the Optiplex GX260, which is very similar to
the Dimension 8250. It also installs on the Dimension 8200.
Wups, you said
When booting from CD it prints:
so /.boot wasn’t a issue here.
Assuming disabling DMA doesn’t cure (“press ESC” for .altboot)
(I guess CDROM had no-DMA for default…)
Making a boot floppy, then booting from it does exactly the
same thing.
seems rather odd.
I guess the System Commander is doing something nasty;
Be sure the boot floppy is correct
(check it on your machine, then hand it to the colleague)
set the BIOS to boot from floppy
(not from System Commander in HDD, if this is the case)
As a rule of thumb you’re on your own when using
anything nonstandard (LILO, GRUB, MBM, whatever) during boot.
Now the above assumes that the trouble is that
bootloader couldn’t find the image file;
If the case is something AFTER the procnto is loaded, these won’t apply.
the first partition on the HDD, followed by 100-some-odd GB in an NTFS
partition for WinXP, and then 6 GB of unpartitioned free space at the
Gotcha:
Default installer can only allocate a Primary partition,
not a free space in Extended Partition, so
you may need to “truncate” the Extended partition in some way.
(can System Commander do this?)
It may not boot if installed beyond 137GB (INT13 28bit LBA limitation)
(currently this won’t apply as it seems 120GB)
–
kabe
Computer is a Dell Dimension 8250:
2.4GHz
512MB
120GB HD
Symptoms:
When booting from CD it prints:
[hit esc for altboot]
then … across the screen.
When the “.” hits the right side, the computer reboots.
I suppose you’re talking about one line of dots across the screen, it’s OK.
I have also QNX partition on top of disk: first partition is FAT16, second
partition is NTFS, third partition is QNX. When there is problem with .boot
file location, I have quite few lines of dots on the screen. And finally it
hangs, not reboot.
So, I assume the problem arrives when system image (.boot) has already read
and placed to memory and jump to image occured.
there is something wrong with system initialization in image on Dell
Dimension 8250;
there is something wrong with BIOS function for memory transfers on the
Dell Dimension 8250.
Eduard.
Making a boot floppy, then booting from it does exactly the
same thing.
Other than this, I have zero clue as to what’s going on…
there’s NO warning or error messages, etc.