I have made a copy of the only working kernels directory, made a make
mrproper and then copy over the .config and run make oldconfig and
then make && make modules_install (and of course copy the new kernel
to /boot), but still no luck.

The only difference I can see is at the point when the Grub has loaded
the kernel, on the only booting one it says:

setup 0x2e00

while on all other kernels I get

setup 0x32000

On 26 Sep, 16:18, "J.O. Aho" <u... at (no spam) example.net> wrote:

[snip]
I have made a copy of the only working kernels directory, made a make
mrproper and then copy over the .config and run make oldconfig and
then make && make modules_install (and of course copy the new kernel
to /boot), but still no luck.

Did you add a suffix name to the copy of the kernel, so that you can
differentiate it from the original?

Also, I tend to use make install rather than just copy the kernel to
the /boot partition. This copies the System.map file as well.

[snip]
The only difference I can see is at the point when the Grub has loaded
the kernel, on the only booting one it says:

setup 0x2e00

while on all other kernels I get

setup 0x32000

This seems very strange. Two thoughts spring to mind:

1) Have you changed the compression algorithm for the kernel and does
your version of GRUB understand this compression algorithm?

2) Are you building a relocatable kernel?

I have run into a really strange problem, and #Gentoo and #Gentoo-Kernel don't
seem to offer any help.

I have two Asus Crosshair II Formula motherboards. One has the 2009 BIOS (AMD
9550 CPU, 5 HD) and the other the 0040 BIOS (this one has two GF8600 cards and
AMD 9850 CPU, 1 HD), otherwise they are the same, same type of memory.

The problem is with the one with BIOS 2009, it boots only one kernel, a kernel
gentoo-2.6.30-r1 I compiled 22 of July with the tun patch applied manually. If
I copy a working kernel from the BIOS 0040, it don't boot, I compile a kernel
on the machine (I tried with gcc 4.1.2, 4.3.2 and 4.4.1) the kernel won't boot.

I have rebuilt the toolchain, I have even used the one from the other machine,
still the same result.

I have tried with different versions of grub, from 0.96 ro 0.97-r9 and even
the grub-static-0.97-r9, no difference there.

I have tried an earlier BIOS on the 2009 (this is the last version I have
changed to and it's the latest released by Asus).

I have used the old config from the working gentoo-2.6.30-r1 by using

zcat /proc/config.gz > .config && make oldconfig

I have started from scratch, I have copied the config from the other machine
and run an make oldconfig on it and then tried to compile the same version of
the kernel, with no success.

I have made a copy of the only working kernels directory, made a make mrproper
and then copy over the .config and run make oldconfig and then make && make
modules_install (and of course copy the new kernel to /boot), but still no luck.

The kernel always compiles without any errors, I have everything I need for
booting, file system, SATA drivers built in, so I don't use nor need the inird.

Building anything else on the machine work as it should, no faults, nor
coredumps or segfaults.

The only difference I can see is at the point when the Grub has loaded the
kernel, on the only booting one it says:

setup 0x2e00

while on all other kernels I get

setup 0x32000

after displaying this, the grub becomes frozen, the cursor do still blink, but
the kernel seems to not be really loaded or that it fails in the early stages
of uncompress.


I really do not know what to do, I have nothing broken when running
revdep-rebuild, I have rebuilt everything with emerge -eu system just a couple
of weeks ago and I have had this problem from the day when I tried to compile
gentoo-2.6.30-r3 and the problem is there also with gentoo-2.6.31, so it don't
seem to be the 2.6.30 bugginess.

I would really wish to get this fixed, but I have run out of ideas.