Re: systemd woes continue
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 04:11:44PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> systemd works the same way on my Alpha XP-1000 as it works on my Intel boxes.
Interesting. It doesn't work on mine; it fails to mount the
filesystems even when I recently tried a new install into a
spare partition (but I did use debootstrap to install, not the
installer disk).
> I assume you are talking about the non-functionality of a separate /usr partition,
> but this is something that isn't guaranteed to work well on Linux,
Pardon? A separate /usr partition has always been supported on
Linux, so I am not sure what you are tallking about...
> > The other question I have is whether or not someone has fixed
> > the issue with fdisk on the system,
fdisk is a lost cause. It no longer supports a BSD partition. I
believe the maintainer of fdisk was spoken to about this quite some
time ago but was not interested in fixing it.
It is a while since I have partitioned a disk for Alpha but I think
parted should work.
> debian-installer doesn't use fdisk (anymore), it uses partman. Did you try any of
> the recent installation images, see [1]. Please note these images are currently
> shipped without proprietary firmware.
Yeah, that's a problem for any Alpha with a Qlogic SCSI controller.
Some Solutions:
1) if you have a recent Alpha with USB then you just need to plug
in a memory stick with the linux non-free firmware package during
install.
2) One could build your own kernel with the firmware in-built then
do a tftp boot across the network to bring up the Alpha with the
installer in the CD drive and continue to install.
3) One could debootstrap a minimal system on x86-64; use qemu-alpha
to 2nd stage bootstrap and install the kernel/firmware and generate
an initrd with the firmware. Then write that to the disk that will
then be installed into the Alpha, but you likely need a SCSI
controller for the x86-64 machine to write the disk.
4) In the absence of the SCSI controller for your x86-64 machine,
extend the tftp boot on Alpha to NFS mount that Alpha root
filesystem you just bootstrapped and bring up the Alpha entirely
from the network, and then install manually to its system disk.
So many options to install...
Cheers,
Michael.
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