Re: alpha server 8 5/500

[Ivan Jager <aij+nospam@andrew.cmu.edu>]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, socraxko, tomaxko's evil personality wrote:
> i want to use some old as800 and want to install linux on it, i've only
> tried with debian "etch" until now, i know that centos, *BSD and alpha core
> are also available, but i want to stick with debian.
>
> this is my first time installing an alpha port of debian, booting process is
> ok, installing process begins and stops at recognizing hardware because no
> cd-rom "driver" is available, so install process canīt continue, i've also
> tried to configure the network for remote install but the nic canīt be
> recognized either.
>
> i've googled for this with little success, the AS800 hardware is intact,
> with no modifications, the cd drive i believe is DEC, all drives are scsi
> but the floppy.
>
> the scsi board controller is a Qlogic qla1040.

Did you check dmesg to see whether it loaded drivers for the qla1040? 
Alt-F2 will give you a console with a shell where you can run dmesg. 
Alt-F{3,4} have possibly useful messages from the installer.

> note: the debian-40r2-alpha-kde-CD-1.iso has 672.518.144 bytes, and the
> cd-rom specs are 600mb, donīt know if this could be a problem.

IIRC the spec was for 650 MB, which would be 681.574.400 bytes. Anyways, 
that wouldn't prevent it from loading a driver for the drive. It would 
have to load a driver before it could try to read the CD and get read 
errors.

Ivan