Sarge install attempt on Alpha
1. Workstation is AlphaStation 200 4/100 with 48 MiB of RAM, currently
running Debian GNU/Linux (mostly sarge and some sid), kernel
2.6.8.1.
2. With some effort I managed to set up BOOTP server on my OpenBSD
SPARC, TFTP I have used before. Now "boot ewa0" works.
3. I noticed that kernel (on "boot.img") does not detect TGA (DECchip
21030) frame buffer. No messages from kernel show up on frame
buffer console.
4. With 'boot ewa0 -flag "console=ttyS0"' and terminal on serial port
I got at least messages from kernel, but still cannot get to
installer.
5. Replacing TGA frame buffer with ATI (Mach64 GX) helped me further
and I got to see that root filesystem was not found.
6. Reading Debian sarge rc1 Installation Guide did not help directly,
but I ended up trying "strings boot.img | less" and found
"root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=16384 devfs=mount,dall" not too far
from the beginning.
7. Using 'boot ewa0 -flag "root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=16384
devfs=mount,dall"' I got installer up and running.
8. Installer detected all hardware needed for successful install.
9. When installer got far enough to touch partition maps, it did run
out of RAM. Some processes got killed by kernel and installer got
somewhat confused, I killed it from shell and it restarted itself.
10. Starting with additional "debconf/priority=medium" let me play
around more to get to partition table options dialog, but "parted"
would still not run. When I did start "parted" from installer
shell, it said "Error: Unable to satisfy all constraints on the
partition." when I used "print".
11. I booted back to fully functional Debian GNU/Linux system and
tried "parted" again there, still getting same error message.
There is currently FreeBSD Alpha installed on that second harddisk
I tried to use to test fresh Debian install on.
12. "fdisk" shows this information about that harddisk, no idea about
why "parted" does not like it:
---
Detected an OSF/1 disklabel on /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target2/lun0/disc,
entering disklabel mode.
BSD disklabel command (m for help): p
8 partitions:
# start end size fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
a: 1 17 17 4.2BSD 4096 32768 64
b: 18 30 13 swap
c: 1 133* 132* unused 0 0
d: 31 133* 102* 4.2BSD 4096 32768 64
---
Some details:
"/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-alpha/rc1/images/netboot/boot.img"
from local Debian mirror, md5sum "c276117b8c608975ecdd3e443a542656",
timestamp "2004-08-02 20:50".
--
"pienena / Paavo "Rainbow Rat" Hartikainen
minusta / E-mail: pahartik@sci.fi
tulee / URL: http://www.sci.fi/~pahartik/
rotta" / EFnet: pahartik at #Atari and #LionKing
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