Dear Matias,
in message 76E5F712842F5F49A35738622BAA0F4FDC4393@ESEALNT442.al.sw.ericsson.se you wrote:
I solved the problem by flashing the two other boards with PPCboot 1.1.6 , now everything works fine.
Argh... that was NOT necessary.
Sorry that I didn;t find the time to reply earlier.
After 1.1.6 I will go for the u-boot distribution.
You should do that anyway.
But it is even more important that you understand that it was a user error that prevented your board from booting as expected:
I thought the bootargs parameter should supply the Linux kernel with it's parameters,
bootargs=root=/dev/nfs rw nfsroot=130.100.50.56:/tftpboot/130.100.50.55 ip=130.1 00.50.55:130.100.50.56::255.255.255.0:::off
I doubt that this was the actual setting of the "bootargs" variable:
Linux version 2.4.18_mvl30-lvl7 (uabtrg@RedHatServer) (gcc version 3.2.1 2002093 0 (MontaVista)) #1 Fri Jul 18 11:24:13 CEST 2003 Broadcom BMW Fast Ethernet Routing Switch BMW port (C) 2003 LVL7 Systems, Inc. (linville@lvl7.com) On node 0 totalpages: 16384 zone(0): 16384 pages. zone(1): 0 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Kernel command line:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here you can see that ABSOLUTELY NO arguments were passed to the Linux kernel. This makes me believe that you did NOT set "bootargs" at all.
...
=>printenv baudrate=9600 clocks_in_mhz=1 ethaddr=00:10:18:82:01:A1 lan_ifname=bcm0 lan_ifnames=
Such a setting "cannot happen". If you attemot to set a variable to an empty string this means the variable is deleted from the environment.
lan_hwnames= lan_hwaddr= wan_ifname=eth0 wan_hwname= timer_interval=3600 ntp_server= log_level=0 time_zone=PST8PDT upnp_enable=0 os_server=http://router:kilroy@64.162.141.122 stats_server=http://router:kilroy@64.162.141.122/cgi-bin/stats.pl console_loglevel=7 lan_proto=dhcp lan_ipaddr=192.168.1.1 lan_netmask=255.255.255.0 lan_stp=0 wan_hostname= wan_domain= static_route= filter_ip= filter_tcp= filter_udp= filter_mac= forward_tcp= forward_udp= dmz_ipaddr= http_username=router http_passwd=kilroy http_wanport=8080 http_lanport=80 pppoe_ifname= pppoe_username= pppoe_passwd= pppoe_idletime=60 pppoe_keepalive=0 pppoe_demand=0 pppoe_mru=1500 pppoe_mtu=1500 wl_ssid=Broadcom wl_country=USA wl_closed=0 wl_wep=off wl_auth=0 wl_key=1 wl_key1= wl_key2= wl_key3= wl_key4= wl_mac= wl_macmode=allow d11b_channel=11 d11b_rate=0 d11b_rateset=default d11b_frag=2346 d11b_rts=2347 d11b_dtim=3 d11b_bcn=100 d11b_plcphdr=long d11a_channel=64 d11a_rate=0 d11a_rateset=default d11a_frag=2346 d11a_rts=2347 d11a_dtim=3 d11a_bcn=100 d11g_channel=11 d11g_rate=0 d11g_rateset=default d11g_frag=2346 d11g_rts=2347 d11g_dtim=3 d11g_bcn=100 restore_defaults=0 wan_dns=130.100.241.150 130.100.76.22 130.100.76.32 wan_wins=147.214.112.67 153.88.193.201 wan_lease=604800 wan_ipaddr=0.0.0.0 wan_netmask=0.0.0.0 wan_gateway=0.0.0.0 os_name=linux os_version=2.4.19-rc3 filesize=25994a dhcp_start=130.100.50.56 dhcp_end=130.100.50.56 gw=255.255.255.255 nfsroot=130.100.50.56:/tftpboot/130.100.50.55 root=/dev/nfs rw bootdelay=5 bootfile=pSystem netmask=255.255.255.0 ipaddr=130.100.50.55 serverip=130.100.50.56 rootpath=/tftpboot/130.100.50.55 bootcmd=tftpboot 00400000 ; bootm bootargs=root=/dev/nfs rw nfsroot=130.100.50.56:/tftpboot/130.100.50.55 ip=130.1 00.50.55:130.100.50.56::255.255.255.0:::off stdin=serial stdout=serial stderr=serial
Environment size: 1903/8172 bytes =>
All these empty variable values are "impossible". The only way such a thing can happen is that there are some unprintable characters (like terminal escape sequences) embedded.
I can only speculate, but I am 99.99% sure that you used (or tried to use) cursor keys etc. when entering the environment, therefore entering a lot of invalid characters.
The same must be the case for the bootargs variable - I bet there are some unprintable characters embedded in the vaiable name, so it does not get recognized when booting the Linux kernel. You can verify this by typing "printenv bootargs" - I bet a case of beer that the variable will not be found. Or somebody meddled badly with the envrionemtn processing code.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk