Re: Help! - DEC Alpha install

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Shawn wrote:

> I am installing Debian on an Alphastation 255 and am
> having problems getting Debian to boot from MILO.
> The error messages of interest are as follows:

You might get more/better help on debian-alpha list, I usually subscribe to that and
not this because of the traffic here, and think I'm not alone...

> Warning: Unable to open initial console /dev/console
> Kernel Panic: cannot open initial console /dev/console
>
> And then she sinks.
>
> The boot command I have been using is as follows:
> MILO> boot fd0:linux root=/dev/fd0 panic=30

This is the rescue floppy?  IIRC, you need:

boot fd0:linux root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1

You need to make the root.bin floppy also.

The Alpha install docs are absolutely abysmal.  I sent a patch for a small amount of
the HTML about a couple of months ago, which seems to have gone ignored, though it
may have gone into the potato docs.  (Where can one find the potato docs?  What
format are they in?)

Hope this helps,

-Adam P.