Troubles booting Alix2 board - serial

[Simon Hobson]

I've installed Debian Squeeze on an Alix 2D2 board (serial only, no 
display). Things are working fine apart from GrUB which won't boot 
automatically.

Two problems :

On the serial link I get the startup BIOS messages, and then GRUB 
Loading. Then nothing.

I stuck the CF card in a PC and found that it's showing the GRUB> 
prompt on the PC.

So problem #1, although it seems to be set up for serial, it's not 
actually showing anything after "GRUB Loading".


On the PC I found that if I typed the "linux ..." and "initrd ..." 
entries it could boot.

Back on the Alix board I noticed that pressing return moves stuff up, 
so blind typed (or rather copied/pasted) the linux and initrd entries 
after which it boots fine.

So problem #2 is that GRUB is dropping to an interactive prompt 
rather than displaying the menu/automatically booting.


The installed system is Debian Squeeze, with GRUB2 1.99-22.1 
installed from Debian Testing.

In /etc/default/grub I have (amongst the other entries) :
> GRUB_TERMINAL=serial
> GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --speed=38400 --unit=0 --word=8 
> --parity=no --stop=1"

Which make their way into /boot/grub/grub.cfg :
> serial --speed=38400 --unit=0 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
> terminal_input serial
> terminal_output serial
> set timeout=5
>
> set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
> set menu_color_highlight=white/blue
>
> menuentry 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-5-486' --class debian 
> --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
>         insmod gzio
>         insmod part_msdos
>         insmod ext2
>         set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
> 	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 
> 1101fe21-d3ea-4a57-906d-a349f2c9056d
>         echo    'Loading Linux 2.6.32-5-486 ...'
>         linux   /vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=/dev/sda2 ro console=ttyS0,38400n8
>         echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
>         initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486
> }
> menuentry 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-5-486 (recovery 
> mode)' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
>         insmod gzio
>         insmod part_msdos
>         insmod ext2
>         set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
> 	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 
> 1101fe21-d3ea-4a57-906d-a349f2c9056d
>         echo    'Loading Linux 2.6.32-5-486 ...'
> 	linux	/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=/dev/sda2 ro single 
> console=ttyS0,38400n8
>         echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
>         initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486
> }



Just in case it's relevant ... This is on a 4G compact flash card.
I've a 100M /boot partition, 1.5G root partition, and the rest (2.5G) on /var.



Also, is there any significance in the different layouts (Phys C/H/S 
7745/16/63 vs Log C/H/S 968/128/63 reported by the BIOS) ?

Fdisk says :

# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 3997 MB, 3997163520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 485 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008391f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13       97656   83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              13         195     1464843+  83  Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3             195         485     2333231+  83  Linux

# fdisk -lu /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 3997 MB, 3997163520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 485 cylinders, total 7806960 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008391f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63      195374       97656   83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2          195375     3125061     1464843+  83  Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3         3125062     7791524     2333231+  83  Linux
--
Simon Hobson

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