Re: Trying to install Debian 2.1 on Alpha ES40
Alexandre Vitrac wrote:
>
> I'm totally new to the Alpha world and i'm actually trying to install an
> Alpha distribution (Debian 2.1) on a new ES40 (4-way EV6).
Wow! I haven't even seen one of those things :-) Must be nice!
> The problem is that I don't even get to some sort of boot prompt.
Hmmm...I'm not sure anyone's even attempted to install Debian on an ES40
yet, so the problem is most likely the kernel on the boot disk....
> At this point, no kernel is even loaded, and I've had no chance to give
> some parameters to the bootloader, so this is a very strange behavior.
> I've tried to copy one of the boot images from the CDROM (the generic
> one, as I don't understand a thing to Alpha architectures) on a floppy
> and had exactly the same behavior.
Hmm...it's probably not booting because there is not support for the
ES40 in the generic kernels on the CD. You may require a hand-spun boot
disk. What kind of hardware is installed in your machine? I'll check
with the person who generates the Debian boot floppies for Alpha and see
if he can give me some help on this one (not having booted from SRM, I'm
a little lost here).
> Port of Debian is very poorly documented, and because the ES40 are very
> recent computers, I've found nothing about them on any web site/mailing
> list/newsgroup.
Very true about our documentation. Efforts are being made to
de-Intel-centrify the docs, but they're slow going and the lack of any
newer machines within the core Alpha team hurts our abilities to
properly document installation on those machines (why is it that it
seems that RedHat gets new machines easily before manufacture and we
have to buy them...).
C
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