Brain storm: how do I debug this?

[Omer Zak]

Did you verify that all hardware works properly, especially all physical
memory?
Can you run a memory test on the device?

On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 14:42 +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> In 2009 I won a SheevaPlug as part of Hamakor Prize. At the time, I
> made sure it was actually working (it wasn't at first. The problem
> turned out to be that the MiniUSB cable that was bundled with the
> device was too short to make contact with the MiniUSB connector inside
> the device), and that I can connect to it, and that was it.
> 
> A little while ago I picked it up again, and found out it wasn't
> booting. I managed to bootstrap uboot on it (which i compiled from the
> kirkwood git repository), and boot it into the bundled jffs2 Ubuntu
> 9.04 image that came with it, using a kernel I compiled from git
> (2.6.38-rc8, and later 2.6.38). So far, so good.
> 
> Now I wanted to replace the image on it with Debian. I managed to
> debootstrap debian onto a disk on key, but when I try to boot it, it
> hangs during boot. I moved the image to a UBIFS image on the internal
> nand, but the problem persist. I can boot into single user mode, and
> everything works, but if I try to let the system boot completely, it
> just hangs.
> 
> Symptoms:
> 
>       * Pressing anything on the keyboard does not echo
>       * Magic sysrq key does not work (it does if I send the break
>         before the hang)
>       * The boot sequence starts a couple of the init processes, and
>         does not continue.
>       * The console is working. If I plug a disk on key, I see the
>         console message about it, and it detects the partitions on it
>         a second later.
> I tried to connect via jtag and get a backtrace - the system is in the
> cpu_idle routine - no panic and nothing out of the ordinary, except
> that it is not doing what it was supposed to be doing at this point.
> 
> I tried to remove the last loaded service from the startup. The result
> is that it still loads two services and hangs (just, different
> services).
> 
> Now I'm stuck for idea as to what to try next. Anyone?

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