open firmware does not say why it does not boot linux

[cjb]

I have a touchscreen unit with 1G RAM/8G disk. After fs-update to 12.1.10 os9 1.75, OFW just sits at the ok prompt when powered on. If I type "boot", it tries "boot /wlan" and then returns to the ok prompt. But "boot int:\boot\olpc.fth" works fine; it upgraded me from Q4D10 to Q4D13 and booted into Linux. The problem persists after a reboot.

So, the laptop is still in the broken state: "boot int:\boot\olpc.fth" results in a boot all the way into Linux when issued, but turning the laptop on drops me at an ok prompt with no complaints visible.

[cjb]

Sam pointed me in the right direction:

ok printenv boot-device
boot-device =         u:\boot\qa.fth int:\runin\final.fth net
ok .mfg-data
ww                                        SG  c2
B#  QTF4C820100106                        SS  EN
SN  SHC20500231                           BV  Q4D02
T#  OFW ASSY test $Revision: 1790 $
U#  6AA00C43-691D-3846-5200-16E56F6D564D  WM  20-7C-8F-74-32-24
SD  20120207                              P#  1CL2AZU0KD9
M#  CL2A                                  LA  USA
CC  XXXXXX                                F#  F6
L#  C26                                   S#  AZCL2LIN002
MN  XO-1.75HS                             LO  en_US.UTF-8
KA  1e 30 2e 20 12 21 22 23 17 24 25 26 32 31 18 19 10 13 1f 14 16 2f
    11 2d 15 2c 0b 00 02 00 03 00 04 00 05 00 06 00 07 00 08 00 09 00
    0a 00 02 01 28 01 04 01 05 01 06 01 08 01 28 00 0a 01 0b 01 09 01
    0d 01 33 00 0c 00 34 00 35 00 27 01 27 00 33 01 0d 00 34 01 35 01
    03 01 1a 00 2b 00 1b 00 07 01 0c 01 29 00 1a 01 2b 01 1b 01 29 01
    00 90 6f 4b 41
KM  olpcm                                 KL  us
KV  olpc                                  sk  204
BD  u:\boot\qa.fth int:\runin\final.fth net
MS  cifs:\\Administrator:qmsswdl@10.1.0.2\OLPC_Monitor
ok 

[cjb]

Sam proposed:

ok delete-tag BD ok delete-tag MS ok add-tag TS SHIP

and that worked fine. Probably there's nothing to be done here; possibly it'd be good to show that BD/MS are set to avoid this confusion.

[Quozl]

I agree it would be better if Open Firmware had told you why it did not boot Linux. But I would like to see a consensus on what it should do.

How about printing the TS tag if it is not SHIP? Near the banner check for partition size.

We already emit to the serial port a warning about the TS tag, but you wouldn't have seen that.

[Quozl]

In svn 3000. Yay.

[Quozl]

In Q4D16.