Etch running on an emulated DECstation

[Michel Lespinasse <walken@zoy.org>]

If anyone is interested, I installed Etch on an emulated DECstation
using GXemul:
http://people.zoy.org/~walken/gxemul-etch/HOWTO.html

I have two quick questions:

* I see the Decstation 3max is listed as supported hardware at
  http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.mipsel/ch02s01.html

  How much testing do Debian kernels get on such hardware ? I'm asking because
  I've been unable to run the regular Debian kernels, I had to use my own
  compiled from the linux-mips tree. One important difference seems to be
  that linux-mips has an updated version of the dz serial driver - when
  booting the Debian kernel outputs a few confused messages such as:

	DECstation DZ serial driver version 1.02
	ttyS%d0 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
	ttyS%d1 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
	ttyS%d2 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ
	ttyS%d3 at I/O 0x0 (irq = 15) is a DZ

  the correct messages would be:

	ttyS01 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ
	ttyS02 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ
	ttyS03 at 0xbfe00000 (irq = 15) is a DC7085 DZ

  Anders Gavare (the GXemul author) also says the crash early after the
  debian kernel mounts the cramfs seems to be related to the serial port.
  I know there are many differences between debian and linux-mips kernels,
  so there might be other issues, but maybe it'd be worth trying a debian
  kernel patched with the linux-mips dz driver. I have not tried this yet
  (my only mips hardware is a wgt634u access point, and it's not very fast :)

  BTW the easiest way to start the debian installer kernel within gxemul is
  to get the image from
  http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-mipsel/beta3/images/decstation/r3k-kn02/boot.img
  and run it with gxemul -X -e3max boot.img

* As I was using a custom kernel for the installation with DEVFS and
  DEVFS_MOUNT options compiled in, I still had to go to the shell early
  in the installation to mount the devfs. Anyone know what I did wrong
  that prevents devfs from getting mounted before the installation starts ?

Thanks,

-- 
Michel "Walken" Lespinasse
"Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain
in a James Bond movie." -- Dennis Miller