Re: Installing aboot ?
On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 09:03:28AM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> Does anyone have any pointers for installing the bootloader in alpha?
> I'm pretty familiar with changing the master bootrecord on intel disks,
> and grub and lilo, and I've read the man pages and /usr/share/docs and
> googled on aboot, but I'm obviously doing something wrong.
> I got one basic small install running on my multia's internal 340mb
> scsi, and then used debootstrap to install it again on an external 1.8gb
> drive. I know that in previous alpha installs, you had to leave the
> first couple of cylinders of the drive free for aboot. In the etch
> install, however, it actually creates a partition there that you can see
> with fdisk, and, with the regular install, it puts aboot in there okay,
> and it boots.
The partition is created to satisfy the installer's desire to fill a disk
with partitions from the front.
> With the debootstrap install, however, you have to do that manually,
> and it isn't working. I made a 2mb partition on the beginning of the
> drive for aboot, didn't format it, and then I do "swriteboot /dev/sdb
> bootlx". If I do that from anwhere but the /boot dir, it doesn't work
> because it apparantly needs to use the copy of bootlx there.
Yes, the second required argument to swriteboot is a path to the bootlx
source file.
> If I try to do it from inside the chroot, if doesn't work because it can't
> see the drive really, just like you can't fdisk from in the chroot.
Presumably because you don't have a populated /dev. That's fine, swriteboot
doesn't need to be run from anywhere in particular; all the command does is
copy the contents of the bootlx file to the (alpha) boot sector of the drive.
> And, swriteboot complains about the aboot partition, saying that it
> will overlap that partition, so you have to use the "-f1" switch to make
> it override that. Then it looks like it installs the bootloader okay,
> but it won't boot. So I tried deleting that partion wit fdisk, and
> running swriteboot again, but it's the same thing, even after a reboot,
> claims that it will overlap the partition.
If you still get that error even after removing the partition with fdisk,
then you didn't really remove the partition with fdisk. ;)
> And also I'm wondering if I'm using the wrong bootlx -- are they
> created especially for each install? I wouldn't think so, since you can
> change kernels AFAIK and not have to rerun swriteboot.
No, bootlx is a prepackaged file that's the same across all installs.
Have you tried running abootconf after swriteboot, to tell aboot where to
find etc/aboot.conf?
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
Reply to: