Initial installation of Debian Linux on the PC-164 Dec Alpha System. Configuration: 21164 EV5 500-MHz CPU PC-164 Motherboard 512-Megs RAM Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller 3-COM 10/100bT 905B-TX ethernet Card Number-9 PCI video card Seagate 4.3-Gig Baracuta FW SCSI-2 Hard Drive PS-2 mouse (generic) PS-2 keyboard (generic) Installation: SRM console software loaded: (NOTE: The ARCBios can also be used but it is not as up to date in the PALCode sections as the SRM code is. I chose the SRM model to allow booting "other" flavors of Linux which did not work with the ARCBios code - ymmv) Version: Initial setups: The system was loaded using the 3/5/99 pc-164 floppy set as the initial loader set. The floppies were obtained from: http://lhpca.univ-lyon1.fr/axp/debian.html The filenames: 990305/root1440.bin 990305/pc164/resc1440.bin 990305/pc164/drv1440.bin The PC-164 system was booted up into the SRM Console and the following command was issued to bring up the MILO Linux loader on the console - the resc1440.bin diskette was in the floppy drive for the command: boot dva0 This brought up the MILO Linux loader program. The following command was issued to MILO to start the initial loading operations for the Linux system: boot fd0:linux root=/dev/fd0 rw ramdisk_size=5120 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 The command loaded the Linux kernal for the PC-164 and also probed the system hardware to determine the configuration of the system. When the kernel was loaded the system requested the root1440.bin diskette to complete the initial loading of the root filesystem into the RAMDISK area to continue the installation process. Once the system had loaded the initial kernel and root portions of the system it went on to the Installation program contained on the floppies. At this point the installation program determined the configuration of the system: it had not been setup yet... The installation program prompter for the video display type ( Color in this case). The installation program prompted for the keyboard type ( US QWERTY). The installation program prompted for initialization of the hard driver (it had not been formated or partitioned yet). The hard drive was partitioned as follows: sda1: 500-megs for the / root partition sda2: 2000-megs for the /usr partition sda3: 500-megs for the /var partition sda4: 1000-megs for linux swap space (which the system then limited to 500-megs to match the current memory size) Initial installation of the Kernel and the base system was from floppies: resc1440.bin files used for the initial kernel files drv1440.bin files used for the initial driver files initial configuration of the drivers performed by the installation program: initial configuration of the network performed by the installation program: hostname: gary9.megabits.net IP address: 10.0.0.1 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 10.0.0.254 dns server: 10.0.0.1 initial configuration of the base system: loaded from floppies - the files are: 990305/base14-1.bin 990305/base14-2.bin 990305/base14-3.bin 990305/base14-4.bin 990305/base14-5.bin 990305/base14-6.bin 990305/base14-7.bin 990305/base14-8.bin Once the system is loaded into the computer and the system asks to reboot - allow it to reboot BUT you have to give it the reboot command: boot sda1:vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 or the system will perform a partial bootup then hang at the "unable to located /dev/console" message as the system does not "know" the root device partition is sda1 until you inform it by the root=/dev/sda1 command line message.... At this point the system can be booted using the resc1440.bin diskette to startup from the SRM console and using the boot command line listed above - once the system is booted the system runs off the hard drive on the system. At a later date I plan to configure the system to auto-boot into the operating system but for now the system is configured to perform development work.... This was my target for the moment...