Linux/Alpha Installation and Documentation (was Re: Debian Slink on AS200)
Jim,
On Thu, Apr 08, 1999 at 08:06:26PM +1000, Jim.Leven@agso.gov.au wrote:
> I am wanting to move from RedHat 2.0.20 (ancient) to Debian, but as the
> AS200 that I have is my
> port to everything - I am being (or trying to be) super cautious, otherwise
> I will not have a system to
> use to get help if I stuff up the upgrade!
I assume you are planning to backup your data and doing a reinstall from
scratch?
> The Debian instructions for the initial boot of slink on the Alpha are
> either scant or unmodified Intel instructions.
That's sadly true, I should really wake up and write something. I do seem to
remember reading some fairly useful install instructions. Maybe it was the
Redhat addendum for Alpha, take a look on their website.
> Could you point me to better (more up-to-date) instructions?
I don't know of any. This is a problem with Linux/Alpha that there is a lot of
fragmented/out-of-date information around. If we want more people to migrate
to the Alpha platform, this confusion needs to be sorted out.
Take a look at www.alphalinux.org for a good list of what's out there.
I would like to propose an effort to unify all the various sources of
documentation for Linux/Alpha. Maybe we could create
* A Linux/Alpha Installation Guide
* A Linux/Alpha FAQ
that would supersede the current mess of HOWTOs/FAQs/Install Guides floating
around on the net. These documents could be distribution-independent, with the
specific parts for each distribution being contained elsewhere?
> Do you use MILO or SRM?
SRM and MILO. Basically you have three choices:
a) PC partitions, ARC/AlphaBIOS and MILO.
Setup a FAT partition on your boot disk, mount it on, say, /boot. You can
then boot MILO from this partition. (What format does MILO need to be in?
Can ARC boot "milo" or do you need "milo.exe"?)
b) BSD disklabel, SRM and aboot.
After booting into dinstall, go into the shell on VC 2 and run fdisk (not
cfdisk) manually. Use the 'b' option to create the disklabel, leaving the
PC partitions alone.
There is some documentation about this, somewhere. I don't remember where
(again, redhat?). You need to make sure you have some free space before the
first partition for aboot and (possibly) a kernel image.
See below for my setup.
You will need to install the 'aboot' package and (not sure if this is done
automatically) use swriteboot to install the loader.
c) BSD disklabel, SRM and MILO.
Same as above for BSD disklabel, again you must manually use swriteboot to
install MILO.
My setup is:
6 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
a: 263872 296856 ext2 # (Cyl. 37 - 68)
b: 263872 32984 swap # (Cyl. 5 - 36)
c: 8386182 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 1 - 1017)
d: 263872 560728 ext2 # (Cyl. 69 - 100)
e: 263872 824600 ext2 # (Cyl. 101 - 132)
f: 7305956 1088472 ext2 # (Cyl. 133 - 1018)
BSD tradition dictates the existence of the b (swap) and c (wholedisk)
partitions. The code in fdisk to deal with this is a bit buggy, I think
you need to create the partitions in the order of c,b,a,d,e,f.
You can see I have (wastefully) left 16MB of spare space in front of the
first partition.
Hope this helps.
Martin
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