Re: booting from CD on Alphastation 255
At 02:08 02.04.2005, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Only issue was that it appears to load the tulip network driver which
> doesn't work. de4x5 does work nicely, however. I think that's probably
> hotplug's fault. Anyone know if that's a bug I should be reporting and
> what information (lspci output?) is needed.
Please see bug #294867, which discusses dropping de4x5 as the preferred
module for all chips. If you have a card that *needs* de4x5 to function,
lspci -n and uname -a is going to be important to know.
> Before I build myself a custom kernel does anyone have any suggestions
> on whether I should go with 2.4 or 2.6? Is 2.6 stable on an alpha and
> would it probably be slower on such old hardware?
2.6 currently has problems with support for a number of common (on alpha)
qlogic chips. The corresponding driver is quite stable in 2.4.27.
I've also found that I can't run hotplug on my alpha when running 2.6, as
some miscellaneous driver that's loaded causes a kernel panic. Haven't
tracked it down yet -- since I'm not running serial console, the details of
the crash scroll off the screen and are lost.
I have a Alphastation 500/500 (== Alcor) with kernel 2.6.8-2_generic and
2.6.10 runnig without any *driver* problems. The qlogicisp driver is in the
debian 2.6.8-2 kernel replaced by qla1280 (in pristine kernel in 2.6.10 -
debian backported the qla1280 extension for ISP cards) (be careful when
hotplug tries to load the older driver - two scsi drivers for the same card
crash...: a) don't compile qlogicisp then hotplug fails to load it or b)
put it in the discover/hotplug blacklists). For booting you must also
change mkinitrd to use the right driver when creating a initrd (see other
mails from this list).
EXT3 works with debian kernels (no oops) - the problem is a gcc3.3 bug
compiling the ext3 module.
The Tulip driver works here fatastic with 2.6.8, but de4x5 also works (if
hotplug is used, blacklist tulip and enable de4x5 for your card).
The only problem with 2.6.8 and 2.6.10 here was a problem with irq
handling. In idle mode the kernel crashes sometimes in function
handle_IRQ_event (not in a driver!). Looking into the code I find out that
alpha was the only platform where this function diffs from all other
architectures (relict from 2.4.x?). After replacing the C code in this
function with the x86 code the kernel runs fine (file:
arch/alpha/kernel/irq.c).
Now the kernel runs 3 weeks without crash (before only 6 hours - 2 days -
depends on load).
Only one thing with the network card (tulip OR de4x5 driver): When pinging
the maschine after a reboot (create load on the network interface) before
the tulip/de4x5 driver loaded you get some "pad pmd in memory.c... bla bla"
messages. This only happens after reboot not when fresh booting - could be
that SRM initializes the network card for bootp (SRM displays messages
about 100 MBit media...) and after initializing this card it generates IRQs
or overwrites some memory which the kernel cannot handle correctly without
driver. Dont know. I put away the LAN cable when booting.
I also had success with a NEC USB 2.0 card (no problems - works great) and
with kernel 2.6.8/2.6.10 even 2.4.27.
No problems with a SATA card (Silicon Image) and Seagate Baracuda 120 GB
HDD in kernel 2.6.8-2. You cannot boot from it but I use it only for the
/home partition. SRM detects the card as SCSI adapter but booting from it
fails with a SRM message that it cannot access the drive ("show dev"
displays no devices on this "SCSI" adapter).
Kernel 2.6.10 has the known bug with libata (fixed in 2.6.11 - not tested)
on alpha. There is missing a symbol when loading libata.
Hope this helps.
-----
Uwe Schindler
H.-H.-Meier-Allee 63, D-28213 Bremen
http://www.thetaphi.de - http://www.schindlers-software.de
eMails: uwe@thetaphi.de (private); info@schindlers-software.de (company)
Tel./Fax: +49 700 PCLATEIN (+49 700 72528346)
Schindlers Software - Home of Schindlers PC-LATEIN 3.10
DIE Software zum Lateinlernen!
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