Re: milo source
On Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 02:19:13PM +0500, Jay.Estabrook@digital.com wrote:
> > I remember reading somewhere that the newest version supports symlinks.
> I have no idea on this; take a look at those sources, and see what's there.
Actually, one of the Debian developers has been working on MILO, and has a
version that has symlink support plus some other stuff. Here's Nikita's
announcement:
----->8-----
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 22:41:08 +0100
From: Nikita Schmidt <cetus@snowball.ucd.ie>
To: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: MILO status
Hi,
I just finished what I wanted to do with MILO. The major improvements are:
- symlinks on EXT2 FS;
- memory size detection when booted from SRM;
- parameters block that specifies a command line for autoboot (useful when
neither ARC nor NVRAM is available);
- a separate tool to view and set the parameters block;
- lots of bugfixes.
The introduction of this "parameters block" means that it is now
possible to pre-program MILO (via its binary image) to execute a command
on startup. If MILO is booted from ARC or AlphaBIOS and is given
non-empty OSLOADOPTIONS, they take precedence. Otherwise the hardwired
command is executed.
For example, on an installation disk it may be useful to set this
command to something like `boot -t msdos fd0:vmlinux.gz'.
Several bugs have been fixed in the part that reads /etc/milo.conf and
presents a choice of bootable images a la LILO. It's still far from
perfect, but now hopefully it is at least useable. The command to boot
via /etc/milo.conf is `boot dev:' (without file name).
However, I haven't managed to make the Digital's BIOS emulation library
work. I wonder how those binaries from gatekeeper are built... Well,
the free x86emu code works fine for me with my S3, so I'm not concerned
too much.
For those who are interested, this stuff is now available under
ftp://genie.ucd.ie/pub/alpha/milo. There is a big patch for MILO, a
small patch for the kernel (on top of alpha-patches), a tool to play
with the parameters block and a binary MILO image for Avanti.
Cheers
Nikita
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 01:42:33 +0100
From: Nikita Schmidt <cetus@snowball.ucd.ie>
To: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: More on MILO
Further to my announcement, I have built some more MILOs for different
platforms with both Digital's and free x86 emulation libraries. If
anybody wants to try them out, they are in the standard place,
ftp://genie.ucd.ie/pub/alpha/milo. Your feedback is very welcome!
The images are named <platform>.free and <platform>.dec, depending on
the emulation package used. I doubt those *.dec will work, but who
knows. The following system types are supported at the moment:
Alcor
Avanti
Miata
Noname
PC164LX
XL
XLT
Note that the file names are all lowercase.
Thanks
Nikita
-----8<-----
> Be aware that those MILO sources build best against 2.0.30 kernels patched
> with the matching alpha-patches-2.0.30-0.4.gz, and WILL NOT WORK if built
> under the equivalent of RH 5.x with GLIBC-2.0, as the binary-only DEC BIOS
> emulator doesn't seem to work at all well when linked with the newer code
> and/or libraries (it is C++ code, and built under RH 4.2)... :-\
Is there any way this could be updated? Nikita's got MILO working with the
free emulator, but that's got known issues with certain video cards, etc.
Does anyone have access to this source and a RH 5 machine?
Alternately, does anyone know how much work would be involved in improving
the free BIOS emulator to be in line with the capabilities of the
binary-only one?
Mike.
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