Paul Slootman wrote:
--snip-- < That's exactly the point. Your filesystem was created by an old version, and hence your filesystem *is* an old version. There's basically no problem with that. However, when doing a fresh installation (or otherwise creating new filesystems nowadays), you'd need to choose backwards compatibility. The installation procedure asks if you want this, if mke2fs'ing by hand you need to supply an option. I upgraded my root disk at some time from a 1GB to 9GB, and at that point MILO stopped working. Only after a long time did I realize that was because I had created the new filesystem without the backwards compatibility that my (and your) MILO needs. In the meantime I had discovered that it worked if I put my kernel on the FAT filesystem where MILO also lives, so it wasn't a real problem anymore. If I still needed to boot from floppy, I'd seriously consider reinstalling :-)
Bear with me, Paul :) I am just trying to understand this, and I am still missing something... maybe! I did exactly the same thing last summer (about Aug, I think). I upgraded from a 2 Gig HD to a 9 Gig one. It was absolutely clean... no previous file systems installed. I created a small FAT partition first and installed the linload and old milo I had been using on it and set it up to boot to the milo prompt in ALPHABIOS from this. I then got the current "testing" boot floppies and proceeded to do an install from scratch from the net. This was my first try at doing this and it all went very smooth. This was just a HD swap, so I left my OS settings in Alphabios the same and when it came to the "reboot" step it booted right into the new install! The new HD was partitioned and formatted entirely (except for the FAT partion) with the "testing" boot-floppies. I guess my "problem" is that I don't recall any question during the install about backward compatibility. I must have been on "automatic" at the time and just lucked out, or the "default gods" protected me :)
My curiosity is taking over... think I will take a look at the most recent boot floppies and pay attention this time! My Alpha is sort of my "lab rat" at the moment.
Did you just drop the kernel in the FAT partition and go with it, or did you have to change your milo boot string to point to it to get it to boot from there? I suspect the latter & if so could you share your settings with me? I am eventually wanting to get a 2.4 kernel running here with ext3, and I wonder if this method "might" be useful in doing that... just rambling...
Cheers, -Don Spoon- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-alpha-request@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org