No Eide interface found

jk1 · June 23, 2009, 9:39pm

Hi

Background: Ours is an embedded system, .boot, OS and all application sw lies in a CF which is connected thro a IDE interface. In .boot we ll start the IDE driver, mount the QNX partition, common servers like pipe, mqueue, serial driver’s etc are run. (we are using QNX 6.2.0)

Problem: some 1 out of 100 times our system is hanging in the startup screen, it says
“No eide interface found”,
“mount: can’t mount / (type qnx4))”
“mount: possible reason: no such device or address”

Have any one of you had come across such problems?
Is there any root cause or solution??

Thanks in Advance
J

Tim · June 24, 2009, 12:41pm

J,

Are you using diskboot in your .boot image (ie your build file)?

If you are I’d recommend getting rid of it and just starting the devb-eide driver manually. Diskboot can suffer from some timing problems that cause it to not detect CF cards.

Tim

jk1 · June 24, 2009, 3:49pm

Thanks Tim for the reply,

Actually we are not using Diskboot command in our Build file(.boot file)
Below is our build file

[+compress]
[virtual=x86,bios] .bootstrap = {
startup-bios -Nmachine-name
PATH=/proc/boot:/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/photon/bin:/ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/proc/boot:/dev/shmem:/lib:/lib/dll:/usr/lib:/usr/photon/lib:/usr/photon/dll procnto -v
}
[+script] .script = {

Start up some consoles

devc-con -n4 &
reopen /dev/con1

Start the pci server

seedres	
pci-bios &
waitfor /dev/pci

start IDE driver

    devb-eide eide nobmstr eide slave blk auto=partition &
waitfor /dev/hd0t77 60


mount /dev/hd0t77 /
mount /dev/hd0t78 /App
mount /dev/hd0t79 /Logs

#Then other sservies and drivers are started…

The System is getting hanged from “start IDE driver” onwards…

Any inputs???

Thanks in Advance
JK

Tim · June 24, 2009, 5:02pm

JK,

We also use a CF card on a PC104 board. I’ve never had any issues. My build file looks like:

[virtual=x86,bios +compress] boot = {
    # Reserve 64k of video memory to handle multiple video cards 
    startup-bios -s64k

    # PATH is the *safe* path for executables (confstr(_CS_PATH...))
    # LD_LIBRARY_PATH is the *safe* path for libraries (confstr(_CS_LIBPATH))
	#    i.e. This is the path searched for libs in setuid/setgid executables.
    PATH=/proc/boot:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/proc/boot:/lib:/usr/lib:/lib/dll:/opt/lib procnto
}

[+script] startup-script = {
    # To save memory make everyone use the libc in the boot image!
    # For speed (less symbolic lookups) we point to libc.so.2 instead of
    # libc.so
    procmgr_symlink ../../proc/boot/libc.so.2 /usr/lib/ldqnx.so.2

    # Default user programs to priorty 10, other scheduler (pri=10o)
    display_msg "amproBoard Build Ver 1.0"

    [pri=10o] PATH=/proc/boot pci-bios &
    devc-con -n4 &
       
    # Disk Driver
    devb-eide blk cache=2m,automount=hd0t79:/ & 

      # Wait until the disk manifests itself
    display_msg "waiting for drive to mount"
    waitfor /x86  10

    # Some common servers and drivers (serial) 	
    display_msg "starting some drivers"
    pipe &
    mqueue &
    devc-pty -n32 &
    devc-ser8250 -u1 3f8,4 2f8,3 -u3 3e8,11 -u4 2e8,10 &

    # Do all the system init from /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
    display_msg "run the sysinit file"
    sh /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

    # Start the console sessions for logging in	
    reopen /dev/con1
    [+session] login &
		
    reopen /dev/con2
    [+session] login &

    reopen /dev/con3
    [+session] login &

    reopen /dev/con4
    [+session] login &
}

The only real differences in how we start are:

You specify nobmstr (not sure why you do that since CF supports it or mine do)
I automount my only partition and you enumate your 3 partitions.
You have the slave option turned on (do you have slave devices?).

My comments would be:

We use SanDisk Ultra 2’s for our CF card (2 gigs in size). What kinds are you using? Maybe the problem is the cards themselves not responding or not responding in a timely manner to devb-eide.
I’d check the BIOS on your board to see if there is anything you can do/change for IDE devices in terms of timing.
Not sure why you have the eide option twice on the devb-eide line.
I’d get rid of the slave option unless you have a slave device like CD-Rom that you need. You might in fact issue a noslave instead because that speeds up devb-eide because it then ignores looking for slave devices.
Maybe the issue is with the auto=partition option. Maybe try automounting your / partition and then doing the others in rc.local

Tim