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Re: Woody on AplhaDEc 500a - what boot parameters to use?



Geert Stappers wrote:

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 05:54:16PM -0500, John Larsen wrote:
I am installing woody on a Alpha personal workstation 500a. It used to run Suse 7.1. However, I get stuck in the installation and it keeps going back to the installation menu after prompting for being rebooted.

All seems to work ok until the rebbot to continue the installation of the system. I would appreciate a pointer in the right direction ( I did read the fine manual ) but I am still unclear on the boot parameters upon rebooting.

I have booted from a floppy containing linload.exe and milo and installation from the cd works ok.

After installing the base system, kernel and drivers I find the following mounted:

/dev/ram0	on	/	type ext2 (rw)
/proc		on	/proc	type proc (rw)
/dev/sda2	on	/target	type ext2 (rw)
/dev/cdrom	on	/instmnt type iso9660 (ro)

there are two versions of fstab on on /target/etc
/dev/sda2	/	ext2	errors=remount-ro
/dev/sda3	none	swap	sw
proc		/proc	proc	defaults
/dev/fd0	/floppy	auto	
/dev/cdrom	/cdrom	iso9660

and /etc/fstab that only shows the /dev/fd0

Then mkdir /mnt/fat
mkdosfs /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/fat
cd /instmnt/milo
cp miata linload.exe /mnt/fat
mount then also shows /dev/sda1 on /mnt/fat

fdisk /dev/sda indicated sda2 as bootable

I edited the boot parameters as boot sda2:/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.20-generic root=/dev/sda2 but that doesn't work - it just restarts the installation from the cd.


Your system boots in several stages:
* ROM
* SRM or ARC
* MILO
* vmlinuz

The ROM has been told to use SRM or ARC
SRM/ARC starts MILO
MILO loads and starts vmlinuz

but that is only the simplified version of the boot chain.

Are you sure you configured at the right place the right item?
What happens when you remove the bootfloppy from the floppy drive?

It reboots no different whether the floppy is in or out. I have noticed that milo finds a miata version of 2.2.16-suse and then detects a change of disk, then uses the cd-rom and the installation starts over. Thanks for your help. I understand that debian-alpha is the proper list so I'll ask there.


Thank you in advance,
John Larsen


Geert Stappers





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