Thanks for the tips. I have gotten a little farther. I recently found
the addendum to the RedHat 6.1 install that talks about Alpha. Reading the
SRM howto and the addendum helped me understand a little more about the aboot
and BSD label issue. So Here is what I did.
- Booted from floppy to install from CD with RedHat6.1.
>>> boot dva0 -file vmlinux.gz -flags "root=/dev/scd0 text expert"
RedHat mentioned that I needed to use expert mode to install but didn't
say how to do it. I used some parts from the addendum and another part from
the axp mail-list archives to make up this line. But the above got me going.
- Created partitions using fdisk. RedHat said I would have to use the
fdisk utility in the redhat install expert mode and use the BSD labels. So I created
the following partitions.
a: 4Mb boot
b: 128Mb swap
c: 20Mb ext2
d: 3Gb ext2
e: 1Gb ext2
The addendum said to have a: of type boot and b: of type swap and rest as ext2.
- Assign names to partition.
a: 4Mb boot
b: 128Mb swap
c: 20Mb ext2 /boot
d: 3Gb ext2 /
e: 1Gb ext2 /var
Should a: have a mount point? It wasn't mentioned anywhere.
- Then I installed all the rest of the software.
Now the trick is, how do I boot. I have tried may different ways of booting.
>>> boot dka0 -file 3/vmlinuz -flags "root=/dev/sda4"
>>> boot dka0 -file 3/boot/vmlinuz -flags "root=/dev/sda4"
>>> boot dka0 -file 3/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.13-0.9 -flags "root=/dev/sda4"
>>> boot dka0 -file 3/vmlinuz-2.2.13-0.9 -flags "root=/dev/sda4"
>>> boot dka0
All of them get me into the aboot but it complains either about unknown
compression or can't mount partition 1. Was I supposed to to give a:
a mount point? Or is my partioning all wrong? I'm not sure I understand
the a: being boot type.
Hope you can give me that list tip. I feel so close to success.
Thanks,
Greg.
"Duff, P" wrote:
>
> If RH failed to run swriteboot (unlikely) it could cause the error you
> mention.
> Your SRM command line magic might also be wrong.
> Assuming your / partition is the first one on the drive, your boot command
> should look something like
> >>> b dka0 -fi 1/boot/kernel_name_goes_here -fl root=/dev/sda1
> BTW, you are installing on DKA0, aren't you? Otherwise, booting from
> DKA0 won't be real productive. :(
>
> If that doesn't produce the desired results, you might have an onboard
> QLogic SCSI controller. If the boot msgs include something like:
> qlogicisp: new isp1020 revision ID (5) qlogicisp: i/o region 0x9000-0x90ff
> already in use
> you may need to rebuild the kernel w/ Block devices-> Generic PCI
> DMA support turned off. Or you could copy one from:
> ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Linux-Alpha/Kernels/generic-up-2.2.12.gz
>
> I've also seen where installations failed to thrive due to residual stuff in
> the MBR.
> If you boot from the CD and Alt-F2 when you get to Disk Druid,
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024k count=10
> will clean house on your drive.
>
> I hope this helps. If it doesn't, it's still OK because folks who are a lot
> more knowledgeable than I will likely pitch in their $0.02.
>
> P Duff
>
> > ----------
> > From: Gregory Gee[SMTP:gregg@playground.net]
> > Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 4:02 PM
> > To: Alpha Linux
> > Subject: Newbie question about booting.
> >
> >
> > I'm not new to linux but new to Alpha. I am trying to figure out what
> > to
> > do after Linux is installed. Since I am new to Alpha, I decided to use a
> > RedHat6.1 version. I have been able to install it booting from cdrom and
> > floppy,
> > but after the install is done, it says that DKA0 is no a valid boot block.
> > Is there
> > some post installation steps I should have done?
> >
> > System specs:
> > AS 400 4/166
> > RedHat 6.1
> > Firmware SRM
> >
> > When replying, remember that I have pretty much 0 knowlegde about Alpha
> > and SRM.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Greg.
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe: send e-mail to axp-list-request@redhat.com with
> > 'unsubscribe' as the subject. Do not send it to axp-list@redhat.com
> >
-- To unsubscribe: send e-mail to axp-list-request@redhat.com with 'unsubscribe' as the subject. Do not send it to axp-list@redhat.com
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