Re: Woody on Alpha XL366?
Hello Brian,
I'm CCing the Debian Alpha list for this reply, in case someone else
finds this info helpful. This is probably gonna be long anyways, so it
may as well be in the archive.
> ...but I would LOVE to have Woody on this thing.
> Do you have any installation notes on how you were able to do this?
Well, for starters, I never got it to boot from the Debian CDs
correctly. The only way I was able to get into the installer was to boot
from the diskettes.
For that, you need the XLT MILO and linload.exe on one diskette,
rescue.bin on another, and root.bin on the last. The two images,
rescue.bin and root.bin, can be found on the first Woody CD, and you
have to write them to diskettes with rawrite (there's a Windows version
of this utility if you need it) or dd from another linux box. MILO and
linload.exe can also be found on the CD, and those can just be copied to
an empty diskette.
In AlphaBIOS, add an OS (in Utilities->OS Selection Setup). Set "Boot
file" to "A:" , tab over to the next field, and enter "\linload.exe".
For OS Path, the device is irrelevant, and set the file to "\milo" (or
whatever the file name for your copy of MILO on the first diskette is).
(the steps for this can be found in more detail at
http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/alphabios-howto.html - but the setting
they make you put in OS Path is wrong, set it to your MILO file's name).
That should boot you into MILO. Insert your second diskette
(rescue.bin), and type the following command:
boot fd0:/linux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1
That should boot you into the Woody installer, after asking you to
insert the third diskette (root.bin).
The one problem I had with the installer was that at the step called
"Setting your system to boot directly into Debian" (or something like
that), it would just bring me back to the beginning of the installation
process. All the settings I had chosen were still there, but whatever it
was supposed to do at that point, it didn't seem to work. I just skipped
it and did the setup myself afterwards. It must be meant for SRM
machines and not know how to deal with AlphaBIOS.
The setup you have to do to be able to boot the stock Woody install
(before you update to a recent kernel, it includes 2.2.20 by default) is
to go back into AlphaBIOS, and add a new OS entry. The first two
settings are the same (Boot file and OS Path), but in Load options (or
something like that, the last line), you can enter the MILO command to
boot your kernel automatically. For the stock 2.2.20 kernel, that would
be:
boot sda5:/vmlinuz-2.2.20-generic root=/dev/sda7
(of course, substitute sda5 and sda7 for your own "/boot" and "/"
partitions, respectively)
Once you have your system running for the first time, you'll probably
want to update your software/install new software. dselect is the tool
for that. It's a text based menu-driven package manager. (I don't know
if you've used Debian before, but this is what sets it apart from RedHat
and other Linux distros)
The 2.4 kernels almost all need an initrd (initial ramdisk) to load a
minimal kernel and driver modules to be able to boot the real kernel. So
you need to add that to the MILO command once you have a 2.4 kernel
(which you can get with dselect, the generic ones from Debian work great
on my machine). Here's the command:
boot sda5:/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1-generic root=/dev/sda7
initrd=/initrd.img-2.4.22-1-generic
(Note that there is no path for the initrd. I assume MILO automatically
checks in the same path as specified for the kernel [after "boot"],
because that's where it is in my case)
My machine had an Oxygen 102 video card stock, which I had trouble
finding XWindow drivers for (I asked around, and everybody said they
didn't exist, that it's pretty much a Windows only card), so I swapped
it out for a Matrox Mystique I had lying around. If you want to run X on
your machine, I suggest you get an old Matrox, ATI or NVidia card. The
driver support is good, and old ones can be gotten very cheap.
Finally, I never got GNOME to run properly on my machine. (search the ar
chives, I think I asked on this list, pretty darn weird problem) I have
no idea what the problem was, though I have heard from someone that it
may be the Sawfish window manager that freaks out on some Alphas. Using
Metacity might work if you really want GNOME, but I switched to KDE
instead, and it runs flawlessly.
And a final hardware-related note. My machine came with 64MB RAM stock,
which is very little for most tasks, especially if you want to run X.
(even without running X, I was using SpamAssassin on the machine for
incoming mails, and Perl would constantly make the machine swap and
thrash like I've never seen, even on Windows). So if you can, upgrade to
more RAM. If you want the specs of the RAM that works in the machine, I
can provide them to you. I bought 512MB RAM (which is the maximum the
machine can take) on ebay for about 70$ CAN, and the difference is like
night and day.
If you have trouble with your version of AlphaBIOS, I got the newest
version from here:
http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware/archive/alphaxl.html
Though it shouldn't be strictly necessary.
So that's pretty much all the info I learnt when installing Debian on my
Alpha XL366. Some of this took some time, especially finding out what
MILO boot commands to use. Most mailing lists are a bit unresponsive
when you ask for help with MILO commands... Of course, I don't guarantee
that all this will work for you out of the box, even with the info I
provided, but it should help. If you need something else, just ask. I
have gathered some links for more information on installing Debian on
Alphas, and on the hardware of my particular machine, which could be
useful to you. If you want them, reply and I'll send you what I have.
> These machines have a lot of life left in them
I agree!
Good luck!
J-S
________________________________________________
Jean-Sébastien Guay jean_seb@videotron.ca
http://whitestar02.webhop.org/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Zenowich" <bzenowich@yahoo.com>
To: <jean_seb@videotron.ca>
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 9:29 PM
Subject: Woody on Alpha XL366?
> I just read a recent post of yours where you said you were able to get
> Debian Woody installed on an Alpha XL366. I tried installing RH7.2
on
> my XL366, but ran into the dreaded no-boot lockup due to the
> incompatibility between DEC's linload, milo, and kernel 2.4. I rolled
> back to RH6.2 (zoot) on my XL366, and things are okay... but I would
> LOVE to have Woody on this thing.
>
> Do you have any installation notes on how you were able to do this?
> What were the steps you took for the install? What versions of BIOS,
> milo, and linload did you use? What ISO did you start with? What
boot
> parameters did you use? Any help you could offer would be greatly
> appreciated. These machines have a lot of life left in them, if I
> could just get beyond RH6.2!
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Brian Z.
>
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