Kernel 2.6.17 Files

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gnif
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Post by gnif »

No, i dont want to spend any cash on a already flakey xbox, the previous owner must have used one of those $5 soldering irons... the PCB is trash, I managed to repair enough on it to make it boot, just no IDE.

Anyway, thats off topic... I will start a new thread for it later, my main concern is the 2.6 kernel.
gnif
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Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:07 pm

Post by gnif »

orochi wrote:[Edit]
Rereading my post, if the ide is bad my solution would not work
lol, now i think about it... i agree :P cant boot with no CD drive :P
gnif
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Post by gnif »

As I write this, I am compiling a 2.6.16 kernel on the xbox using the following procedure...

Downloaded the 2.6.16 kernel from kernel.org.
Downloaded the 2.6.16 patch from sourceforge.
decompressed the kernel...
decompressed the patch...
ran "patch -p1 < thepatch..."
copied kernel.config to .config
ran "make oldconfig" (no prompts)
ran "make"

so it should be as standard as it can get.
gnif
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Post by gnif »

It booted!!!!

It must be somthing with compiling it on a different machine with a different cpu... hrmmm

I am finally getting somewhere
gnif
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Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:07 pm

Post by gnif »

Ok... now I know I can build a kernel that boots... I am going to attempts a 2.6.17.13 kernel from kernel.org.

I just patched it with the 2.6.17.7 patch, no failures... so looks like I am good to go.

BTW: I am doing all this from work... so I wont be able to watch the box boot... just hope it all comes back up (ethernet :P).
gnif
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Post by gnif »

Ok, it seems that it is broken...
I have confirmed... now to try and fix it.


I have been pouring over the kernel changelogs for things that may have affected the boot process, and I stumbled across a few things that I think may have affected it...
Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
Date: Sat Aug 6 09:42:06 2005 -0700

Check input buffer size in zisofs

This uses the new deflateBound() thing to sanity-check the input to the
zlib decompressor before we even bother to start reading in the blocks.
commit 243393c90f2b7cb781fd794e22786e9c8547901a
Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
Date: Sat Aug 6 09:39:57 2005 -0700

Add fakey 'deflateBound()' function to the in-kernel zlib routines
...
commit 4aad724d3e52238e1ce005f166fbba5b4072a7f6
Author: Tim Yamin <plasmaroo@gentoo.org>
Date: Mon Jul 25 23:16:13 2005 +0100

[PATCH] Update in-kernel zlib routines

These bugs have been fixed in the standard zlib for a while.

See for example

a) http://sources.redhat.com/ml/bug-gnu-ut ... 00183.html
b) http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94584...
commit c231c7db30faf93419fc22d680f74d816bea70e2
Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>
Date: Wed Aug 17 13:07:28 2005 -0700

Revert unnecessary zlib_inflate/inftrees.c fix

It turns out that empty distance code tables are not an error, and that
a compressed block with only literals can validly have an empty table
and should not be flagged as a data error.
The above quotes are from the 2.6.13 ChangeLog... I would not be supprised if that is the version that broke on the xbox since the zlib stuff is critical in deflating the kernel during boot, and is known to be flakey on the xbox (see xbox misc.c patch). Who knows what out of these changes has caused gcc to optomize it differently. Mayb we just need to set "-O0" on the zlib library.

Tonight I will try and revert the zlib stuff to a 2.6.1 version and then see what happens, if this works then we will know where the problem is.
blighty
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Post by blighty »

Good work! :D

Any news?

bLiGhTy.
2x xbox v1.0 gentoox home native
2x stock 10GB`s (both built for free :D )

Thanks 2 cheesyboofs, Steinar T & of course ShALLaX.

Falcon; jtag, xbr, 160gb hdd
gnif
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Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:07 pm

Post by gnif »

Sorry for the delay in updating this... had more important things in life to worry about...

anyways... it wasnt the gzip stuff... I messed around for days and couldnt track it down... I am now thinking the problem is in the xboxfb driver, or any number of things before that loads, and because it doesnt load, I cant get any output to tell.

If someone has a debug xbox, or has somehow hacked a serial port onto it, can you please provide me with the output of a 2.6.17 kernel patched for xbox booting? Then I can make some more progress.

Anyway, since this all happend, I have managed to get a 2.6.16.1 kernel booting, and convert this hiddeous thing called "xebian" back into a true Debian system (removed all the horrid branding *SPAM*, and custom xebian packages). Successfully dist-upgraded it... and running on latest testing sources :D
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