Hi everyone, I'm setting up an AlphaServer DS10 with 6.8. This model of AlphaServer has a buggy IDE controller which prevents the use of DMA under most circumstances so I installed a SATA controller. The controller is supported by OpenBSD, but not the SRM console so it's not directly bootable.
I decided to install a small IDE disk module to use as a bootloader and ended up fighting with installboot(8) for a while but eventually got it to boot from the IDE drive and load the kernel. The problem is that now I need to set the N boot flag on every start in order to have it prompt me for the correct root device. On amd64, hppa, etc, you can pass parameters to the bootloader via /etc/boot.conf on the boot device but it doesn't look like that option exists on alpha. I did some checking but was wondering if there was a more permanent solution to this configuration problem (besides recompiling a new kernel with a new root partition...) on alpha, perhaps with a similar configuration file? I do want to get more experience with kernel and low-level programming, so adding a sticky configuration method for this would be something that would appeal to me as a project (if not for me, for everyone with Alphas in the same situation!) but I'd like to avoid reinventing the wheel if there's already a solution for this out there. Katherine
