Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

tiulian · 2014-10-14 22:02:49

Hello everyone, and please excuse me if I didn't do sufficient research on my problem before starting this topic.

I am a newbie, but I know how a thing or two about computers, so I decided I want to install Arch Linux on a compact PC based on AMD Geode LX800 SOC, with 512MB ram, of which 32MB (minimum) are shared as video memory. And, I'm guessing that these 480MB (remaining) of RAM are the root of my problem. So, I made the bootable live USB stick, I am booting from it, I am selecting Boot Arch Linux (i686), the system starts fine until it has to set up the loop device from airootfs.sfs image, where it returns an error, because the path is wrong (instead of i686, it tries to find airootfs.sfs in i586 folder). So far, so good. I am manually setting up the loop0 device using

losetup /dev/loop0 /run/archiso/bootmnt/arch/i686/airootfs.sfs

, and it loads with no problem on /dev/loop0 device. But this is where I am getting stuck, because when I try to

mount /dev/loop0 /run/archiso/sfs/airootfs

, I get

squashfs: error unable to read inode lookup table

. Googling around this, returned some solutions, but none seems to work. I have tried appending "vmalloc=448M" at Boot Arch Linux i686 and some other variations with appending vmalloc and kmalloc, but none seems to work for me.. Do any of you guys think you can help me out of this one ?

Thank's a bunch !

Last edited by tiulian (2014-10-14 22:06:01)

seiichiro0185 · 2014-10-15 13:30:34

AFAIR the AMD Geode LX is an i586 CPU (as also indicated by the wrong path the Livesystem tries to boot), so standard arch, being a i686-optimized distro, will not really work on this CPU (at least there are bound to be problems with stuff that uses i686-specific opcodes that the GEODE does not support).

tiulian · 2014-10-15 14:00:00

Well, I am aware of this, but I'll give it a try anyway, because I also installed various releases of debian and ubuntu on it and it worked pretty fine (though not very fast - especially on ubuntu); now I want to install something light and capable (I'll also try DSL, eventually), because i'm intending to make a small file server out of it - NFS (maybe SMB also), to be able to play mainly music (with rune audio on a RPI) and movies (XBMC on UDOO), and accasionally store/access various small files. So, I understand that it might be a problem related to the fact that it's an i586 cpu, but maybe there could be a way.. any other ideas ?..

Gusar · 2014-10-15 16:45:04

The Geode is very much i686, the only thing it's missing is is the NOPL instruction, but that's not a problem (patching used to be required, it's not anymore). All you need to do to get Arch running is boot with arch=i686 on the kernel commandline and then specify "Architecture = i686" in /etc/pacman.conf

tiulian · 2014-10-16 08:15:56

Thank you !

I will give it a try; I will come back later for some help if I get stuck, 'cause I'm not very shure how to boot with arch=i686 on the kernel commandline, but I hope I'll figure it out somehow.

LE : I guess that I need to append "arch=i686" at the end of the string (after pressing TAB on the Boot Arch Linux (i686)).

Last edited by tiulian (2014-10-16 10:15:44)

tiulian · 2014-10-16 16:17:10

Well, I specified "arch=i686", and now it loads airootfs.sfs to /dev/loop0 device by itself (it doesn't get the path wrong anymore), but when it tries to mount /dev/loop0, the same problem happens..

SQUASHFS error: unable to read inode lookup table

Also tried "vmalloc=448", but same result.. I will try to rewrite the USB stick, maybe it's something wrong with the image..

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-14 22:02:49

Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

#2 2014-10-15 13:30:34

Re: Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

#3 2014-10-15 14:00:00

Re: Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

#4 2014-10-15 16:45:04

Re: Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

#5 2014-10-16 08:15:56

Re: Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

#6 2014-10-16 16:17:10

Re: Arch on AMD Geode LX800 compact PC

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