Hi Y'll
Well, the good news is that Linux booted, and Debian installed.
All that it took was getting the SRM How-TO from alphalinux.org, and a
floppy image.
For those more confused than I am, here is my understanding of this
whole process:
* Following Alpha and SRM HowTo's one makes a boot floppy.
* This floppy contains at the first block or so aboot which is a short
second-stage boot for Linux. then it contains an ext2 filesystem in
which one puts their favorite kernel.
* For installation purposes, this kernel needs to be configured with
RAM disk, and something called initrd.
* The RAMDisk allows the kernel, at boot time to create a ``block
device'' which is really a block of memory.
* The initrd option allows the ramdisk to load a given filesystem
image into that ramdisk.
* You get the machine powered up.
* At the SRM prompt, you put the boot/kernel floppy in the drive and
type boot dva0. Contrary to popular belief, this does work on DS20.
* You will get an aboot> prompt
* Type ``vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1''
* When you see a prompt to insert the filesystem/root disk, do so. I
used the Debian 2.1 (slink) disk.
* The rest will be a normal install.
* When partitioning, do NOT use cfdisk (the default); it creates PC
fdisk partitions and belive or not, not the entire world use these.
* Instead, escape into a shell, type fdisk, then the ``b'' option, and
create BSD disklabel partitions.
* Remember disklabel partitions can overlap! As a matter of fact,
partition ``c'' is assumed to be the whole disk. Partition ``b'' is
the swap device. Old Unices created /root in `a' and then used `g',
`h'.
* I did this (IMPORTANT): Created partition `h' first. IT is small
(few megabytes, say 16) and starts at sector zero. Then I put swap
in `b', root in `a', usr in `d', var in `f', and home on `g'. this
is everely suboptimal for a large server, but allowed me to install.
PROBLEMS:
* fdisk (option b) is broken; IT uses 32 bit integer for computing
sizes, and gets very confused. Perhaps the confusion is only in the
printf to the stdout, but the result is that what you type and what
you get are not the same.
* fdisk is further broken by ``correcting and improving'' your input.
If you say cylinder 55 to start a partition, it will round it off to
cylinder 54, or even 53. This created apparent overlaps.
* Overlap between partitions is not good. It means that when /usr
fills up, it will wipe out the super-block for /home, etc.
* The system booted, convinced it is April 15th, 1931. this confuses
Debian installation tools. In particular these that use make.
Running hwclock would have helped, but it fails on this platform.
* I have yet to figure out how to install aboot & Co. on the hard
disk. So there will be another note coming.
I have done no Linux work in several years, so perhaps this note does
not belong here, or belongs elsewhere too. Feel free to redirect.
--
Sincerely,
Simon Shapiro
Research Fellow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. 404.815.0770 ext. 2057
