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Re: AlphaServer DS25 failure



Hi Jay,

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:41:49PM -0400, Jay Estabrook wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 08:31:55AM -0700, Brian Carnes wrote:

> >    Is there a way for me, as an end user, to influence this?  I played 
> > around with different boot flags at the SRM console, and could get into the 
> > aboot menu to see the different kernels options, but they all appear to 
> > load the same kernel.

> It's NOT a run-time option, it's a compile-time one.

> Choosing LEGACY_START_ADDRESS=y hardwires the physical address at which
> the kernel itself will be loaded as 3MB (actually 0x310000).

> On the TITAN-based machines (DS15/DS25/ES45) the console (SRM) lives
> in that area, so the base address of the kernel needs to be AT LEAST
> 8MB and better 16MB.

> >    Could you put a kernel that works on non-MILO machines into one of the 
> > aboot slots?  Or will there be different netinst boot isos?

> Yes, one could have differently-configured kernels available via aboot
> "slots" on a single netinst CD/ISO; it's just a matter of building the
> kernels (as appropriate) and managing them.

Well, there doesn't seem to be much point in having a kernel listed in
the aboot config that's only needed on systems that don't support SRM,
does there?

Given that there is no milo support in debian-installer anyway, I wonder
if it wouldn't be better to drop the LEGACY_START_ADDRESS option and
trade supporting pre-installed MILO-only systems for supporting TITAN
systems.  Do you have a feel for the relative size of the install bases
of these two system classes?

If there is a real case for supporting the MILO-only systems, in spite
of the overwhelming lack of effort to support it for sarge installs,
then I suppose we would need to talk to the kernel maintainers about
building two different kernel-images for this case.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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