I have successfully compiled and installed many kernels prior to 1.03. However, I'm having problems getting it to work this time. I started from the beta 11d source tree, and applied each of the patches in order until it was patched to 1.03. Compiled fine, and the kernel boots. However, when the player starts, It goes through several startup messages before getting stuck on

"Starting poll thread failed"

It then drops to a bash prompt.

What's going on here? I tried re-applying the 1.03 upgrade and then uploading the kernel, same effect, so that means it's something wrong with the kernel rather than something on my hard disk or in my init that is screwing things up... None of my patches failed or reported errors, and the kernel seems to be valid. It just causes the player to not run properly. What is the poll thread, and what about my kernel could cause that thread to fail to start? Thanks in advance for any help.

"Starting poll thread failed"


I had the same messages when the player couldn't read from some device files. I also had it when the kernel was missing some devices.
I always used "make menuconfig", but that has resulted in some strange compilation errors. After copying the default MK2-config file and editing it by hand, the compile went OK and all devices were compiled in.
Try checking your device files first ( wrong major/minor numbers? ), and then check the boot messages to see if there are devices missing.
You can also try to start the player without serial / USB support.

Frank van Gestel

Hm, where is this default MkII config file? All my previous kernels were done with a config file found on this BBS several months ago. Do you have a config file you can arm me with? I can do a make menuconfig but I really don't know what to change in there.

Here are my bootup messages... I can't see anything abnormal in there.

empeg-car bootstrap v1.00 20000601 ([email protected])

If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,

or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!



e000 v1.03

Copying kernel...

Calling linux kernel...

Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kernel.

Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg43 (root@spaz) (gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)) #2 Sat Jun 30 19:59:20 EDT 2001

Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11

NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.

empeg-car player (hardware revision 7, serial number 80000554)

Command line: mem=12m temp=31

Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS

Memory: 10944k/12M available (1024k code, 20k reserved, 292k data, 8k init)

Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)

Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)

Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)

POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX

Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2

Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039

NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.

NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0

IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP

TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)

IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)

Starting kswapd v 1.5 

SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled

ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART

ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART

ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART

Signature is 67706d65 'empg'

Scheduling custom logo.

empeg display initialised.

empeg dsp audio initialised

empeg dsp mixer initialised

empeg dsp initialised

empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0

empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012

empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005800).

empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)

RAM disk driver initialized:  16 RAM disks of 4096K size

empeg single channel IDE

Probing primary interface...

hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive

hda: IBM-DARA-218000, ATA DISK drive

hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive

ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6

hda: IBM-DARA-218000, 17301MB w/418kB Cache, CHS=35152/16/63

hdb: IBM-DJSA-220, 17297MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=37488/15/63

empeg-flash driver initialized

smc chip id/revision 0x3349

smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])



SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:10:02:2a

Partition check:

 hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4

 hdb: hdb4

RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0

RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).

empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)

Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.

change_root: old root has d_count=1

ÈTrying to unmount old root ... okay

Freeing unused kernel memory: 8k initI see this is a developer image!

Mounting proc

Mounting first music partition

Mounting second music partition

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comp

                                                                        Starting player

empeg-car 1.03.



E !! player.cpp         238: MainThread::Init failed!

Restored terminal settings

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

Player exited normally: 0

Switching to shell-player loop

Starting bash.

empeg:/empeg/bin# 

-Tony
MkII #554

There should be some in the source tree. The patches also contain these.
They can be found under arch/arm/def-configs/

Frank van Gestel

Thanks, things are working now!


-Tony
MkII #554