Subject: Re: SRM vs. AlphaBIOS
From: Xiaozhou Qiu (xq@mars.iol.unh.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 08 1999 - 07:34:29 PDT
>> a) Will I have to repartition (=reinstall) after the switch ? I
>> currently have the FAT/Milo-Setup with Intel Style partitioning
You have to use BSD-disk label to repartition if you want to boot
from hard disk directly.
>>b) In AlphaBios I can select between (unfortunately only three)
>>different
>>Boot Selections. How many are available (or do I have to type in the
>>entire boot command every time I switch)? The reason is I want to try
>>Debian as well as SuSE (maybe I even get on of the free distros they are
>>giving away) parallel to my running RedHat 5.2 and unfortunately that is
>>currently one two much (as I insist on keeping the floppy entry)
I think you have to type in the entire boot command every time you switch
kernels. There is no such a boot menu for SRM. You can only save one boot
option.
>>c) Can SRM boot any partition on any disk ? I just installed (well,
>>somewhat with many problems) Debian somewhere near the end of the IDE
>>disk
>>(my primary disk is SCSI) and AlphaBios only wants to go up to partion 4
>>on my "1" disks (0 is the SCSI one) thus preventing me to boot into
>> Debian (or I misunderstood something). Maybe it works at the
>>Milo prompt ?
BSD-disklabel can recognize up to 8 partitions and you can use aboot to
boot any of them. The problem with current released aboot-0.5-10 is that
it can not boot a partition whose offset is higher than 4 GB. I can send
you a revised copy of aboot if you like.
>>d) Just out of curiosity: What does SRM need the 3 MB for (and why isn't
>>it required by Milo) ?
The 3MB is reserved to store aboot, the boot loader to load kernel. SRM
doesn't know about partitions and filesystems. It just knows a fixed
position in the disk where it can load the boot loader.
sincerely yours
Xiaozhou Qiu
http://www.iol.unh.edu/linux/alpha
Linux Consortium
Interoperability Lab
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824
(603)862-1908
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