Hi there, I'm rather new to the hppa linux scene, so please forgive me if I overlook anything in my notes below. Of course, thanks to everyone that works on the hppa port - things generally went very well. I've just obtained some J5000s, and decided to try to install Debian on them. Here's what I found: The woody cd doesnt boot at all on these for me (palo doesn't load, etc). The sarge full cd kernel DOES boot, but then panics (invalid write errors) regarding the initrd. (Media and iso seem good.) The sarge netinst cd does boot and installed correctly for me. The 2.4 SMP kernel that is installed automatically by d-i off the sarge rc2 cd does not work properly on the J5000 - boots, but shortly after mounting the initrd, the system crashes with a Runway bus error). I managed to work around this by disabling CPU1 in the firmware, booting, then apt-getting kernel 2.6.8-2-32-smp. This kernel seems stable so far, apart from two minor things: 1) The message: Freeing unused kernel memory: Badness in smp_call_function at arch/parisc/kernel/smp.c:342 Backtrace: [<1011963c>] smp_call_function+0x408/0x410 [<101088dc>] flush_data_cache+0x24/0x40 [<10107a38>] free_initmem+0x78/0x38c [<10103d30>] init+0x304/0x410 [<10110c5c>] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x1c/0x24 This doesn't seem to affect normal operation, however, but I thought I'd report it. 2) Rebooting the system, or powering it off doesn't succeed always. It sits with a message on the fb console, saying "Please power off this system". Occasionally, it does restart correctly, however. The sticon video support ONLY works on the EG graphics card if you have selected the 1024x768 mode from the HP firmware beforehand - the default 1280x1024 (I think) sticon mode means the linux display output is purple, screwed up, and pushed over to the left, and therefore unusable. The 2.6.8-2-32-smp kernel doesn't boot properly on the FX6 graphics card based systems - even with video=sticon on the kernel command line, it appears to freeze shortly after saying "sym1: No NVRAM". I may try to debug further via the serial console to see if it really does hang, or just that the sticon output ceases at that point. Is there any way to make these FX6 cards work properly in console mode? I don't care about X. I'm also having two minor issues with the FWSCSI drives. 1) Performance didn't seem too good. dd'ing from one drive to another (9.1GB 10K RPM drives) took 1699 seconds according to time, with dd reporting a rate of 5355740 bytes/sec. Is that normal? I was itching for a 'hdparm -d1' equivalent for scsi! 2) I can hotswap in a new drive, using scsiadd -a, and it's detected, and mountable fine. Using scsiadd -r, I can 'remove' it, but once it's physically removed and reinserted in the same slot, scsiadd -a doesn't 'see' it any more. If I put it in a different unused slot, and scsiadd -a it, it's then detected fine. So, it seems I cannot use a hotswap bay more than once! Sorry for the long email, but I thought I'd mention all my issues in one go. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the results of my install, but a couple of the above issues I'd love to be able to resolve. If there is any additional debug information/steps/testing you'd like me to do, please ask. I currently have 5 J5000s, so am in a position to play with them a bit! Cheers, David
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