Etch running on an emulated DECstation
If anyone is interested, I installed Etch on an emulated DECstation
using GXemul:
http://people.zoy.org/~walken/gxemul-etch/HOWTO.html
I have two quick questions:
* I see the Decstation 3max is listed as supported hardware at
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.mipsel/ch02s01.html
How much testing do Debian kernels get on such hardware ? I'm asking because
I've been unable to run the regular Debian kernels, I had to use my own
compiled from the linux-mips tree. One important difference seems to be
that linux-mips has an updated version of the dz serial driver - when
booting the Debian kernel outputs a few confused messages such as:
DECstation DZ serial driver version 1.02
ttyS%d0 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
ttyS%d1 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
ttyS%d2 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
ttyS%d3 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
the correct messages would be:
ttyS01 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ
ttyS02 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ
ttyS03 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ
Anders Gavare (the GXemul author) also says the crash early after the
debian kernel mounts the cramfs seems to be related to the serial port.
I know there are many differences between debian and linux-mips kernels,
so there might be other issues, but maybe it'd be worth trying a debian
kernel patched with the linux-mips dz driver. I have not tried this yet
(my only mips hardware is a wgt634u access point, and it's not very fast :)
BTW the easiest way to start the debian installer kernel within gxemul is
to get the image from
http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-mipsel/beta3/images/decstation/r3k-kn02/boot.img
and run it with gxemul -X -e3max boot.img
* As I was using a custom kernel for the installation with DEVFS and
DEVFS_MOUNT options compiled in, I still had to go to the shell early
in the installation to mount the devfs. Anyone know what I did wrong
that prevents devfs from getting mounted before the installation starts ?
Thanks,
--
Michel "Walken" Lespinasse
"Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain
in a James Bond movie." -- Dennis Miller
Reply to: