Re: AS200 4/100 install if fd0 not available?
Note sure how helpful I can be here, but just thinking aloud...
On Tue 10 Aug 1999, MJ Watson wrote:
>
> We're running DEC Unix v4.0D patch kit 3 on an AS200 4/100. We've looked
> through the Debian 2.1 Alpha READMEs and been looking on the web, but have
> very little idea of how to get the initial steps of this install done.
> The accompanying documentation seems to leave a LOT to be desired.
True, I ran into this problem when installing on an AS1000A 5/333.
> However, we've only got SRM, no ARC. And no DOS or WinDoze.
Same.
> This is our first Alpha install, we've done several 2.0 and 2.1 on i386.
I had the luck of having done a couple of installs previously. But then,
I had the bad luck that www.alphalinux.org was down that weekend :-(
(there's a certain amount of benefit from being able to access that
site while doing something like this).
> We have a CD-ROM and TLZ07 DAT tape on the system. We don't know from
> our reading exactly what "aboot" is, but we can get to its prompt if we
aboot is a boot loader for alpha linux, just like syslinux or lilo is
for i386 linux. There's also milo, but that doesn't work on all alpha's
or certain combinations of alpha and srm etc. So sometimes you need
aboot, other times you need milo. If you're lucky you can choose which
one you use...
> dd the Avanti resc1440.bin to a tape and boot from it. When we try to
Cool! Booting alphalinux from tape...
> specify the kernel at the prompt, using
>
> boot/avanti/{linux|milo|loadlin.exe} root=/dev/scd0 load_ramdisk=1
>
> it will try to load the specified file, first as plain, then as compressed,
> and error off with "unzip: unknown compression method", and puts us
> back at the aboot prompt.
I think the problem here is that aboot tries to read the medium it's
booted from in a random access way, and that probably fails on tape.
> Does anyone know where we've managed to lose the track? FWIW, we've also:
>
> Tried copying milo.dd to tape (wrong length error message at boot)
> Tried a straight boot from dka100, the CD-ROM device (no boot image found)
Where did you get the cdrom? I had managed to build one that had
successfully undergone the "markisoboot" (or whatever it's called)
treatment, so that aboot is on it at the right place, and aboot can find
the root image.
On the AS1000A I ended up always booting from cdrom, as the disks were
connected to an Adaptec controller that isn't recognized by srm;
connecting a disk to the native controller didn't work because then srm
didn't get past its scsi probe :-(
> dd'ing milo to a spare drive on the system, but couldn't write to the raw device
Hmm, on the AS1000A milo isn't supported.
But if you have a spare disk it should be doable! Do you mean you
couldn't write to the raw device from within Digital Unix? That sounds
strange...
Paul Slootman
--
home: paul@wurtel.demon.nl http://www.wurtel.demon.nl/
debian: paul@debian.org isdn4linux: paul@isdn4linux.de
work: paul@murphy.nl Murphy Software, Enschede, NL
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