Bug#266066: Alpha netboot doesn't mount initrd, causing kernel panic

[Paul Millar <paulm@astro.gla.ac.uk>]

This didn't seem to get through, so I'm retrying without the GPG signature.

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Bug#266066: Alpha netboot doesn't mount initrd, causing kernel 
panic
Date: Tuesday 17 August 2004 09:57
From: Paul Millar <paulm@astro.gla.ac.uk>
To: debian-boot@lists.debian.org

On Tuesday 17 August 2004 00:26, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 12:21:24PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > boot ewa0 -fl "" always works for me.

Sorry Steve, I didn't get your reply straight off.

Erm, yeah, kinda obvious once you say it.  I had boot_osflag set to 0 from a 
previous aboot installation. I can confirm that doing

  boot ewa0 -fl ""

*does* work, as does unsetting the boot_osflag.

So everything works OK, but perhaps this gotcha could/should be documented 
somewhere.  The install manual says that ``boot ewa0'' should work:

  http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.alpha/ch05s01.html#id2511128

If one has default aboot boot_osflag set, then the install will fail.  I think 
just a one-liner, saying to try adding the -fl "" if boot ewa0 fails would be 
enough.


> I know you're very busy right now.  The above doesn't work for me :(
> As mentioned elsewhere on this list, my PWS433AU with qlogic fails
> horribly after an otherwise successful install.  Any idea where to
> start would be appreciated - is this feasible for RC2?

Hi Andy,

PWS433AU's a SCSI card, right?  On one of the machines, I had a Adaptec SCSI 
card AHA-2940AU (I think).  This was causing the kernel to lock.  As it 
wasn't needed in that machine, I simply removed it, which "fixed" the problem 
for me.

At the risk of wandering onto a separate topic, the DMA on the CMD 646 chips 
is causing the kernel some grief.  It eventually works, but it displays lots 
of error messages.  I'll gather the info and submit a proper bug report in a 
bit.

Cheers,

Paul.