Re: Hows Alphadebian doing?
On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Gerhard Poul wrote:
> Not so important, but how is the "Install Windows NT" working in the BIOS ??
> Maybe we can use that...
>
> But if not I'm thinking of a little command line for MILO which boots from
> CD-ROM...
As other people have mentioned, booting is very machine specific
with the Alpha. It is not like Intels where you stick a floppy disk or a
cdrom in the drive, power it up, and boom, Linux boots. Alphas are NOT
your average PC, that is the first thing that one needs to learn about
Alphas. I have an old UDB that has an ARC console, and a newer XL366 that
has the Alpha-BIOS, both require very different booting methods. And
anyway you do it, it will take some amount of human intervention to get
Linux booting on Alphas. They just aren't your average PCs. :)
> > and that was even last summer. Anyway, I always liked a good challenge,
> > something to keep life from getting too boring. :)
>
> A challenge is okay for one or two computers... but think about installing
> 20 alpha machines... The same challenge on these machines is _really_
> boring... :-(((
Only the first machine is a challenge. After that, for the
remaining 19 machines, you know the hoops to jump through, and you can do
it pretty quickly and simply. That is if you took very careful notes of
how you did it the first time... You did take notes?
> I don't want to attack anyone... I only thought about some things... Because
> the debian-alpha CD's I have (yes, we created 3 CD's with our utility)
> aren't working really good....
Making CDs work is a bit outside my realm of experience I am
afraid. As far as I am concerned, if I can mount the CD on another
Win/Linux box, make boot floppies (dd or rawrite), boot the Alpha, and
then feed it a CD to mount and install the drv disk, the base disks, and
the rest of deb packages, then I consider that a working CD.
Now a CD that boots would be nice, but once again on the Alpha,
that is going to be quite difficult as I explained above. But such a thing
in my opinion is not necessary, floppies are just fine for initial boot,
even if you had 20 machines.
> hmmm... Okay... the CD I have work good... But until the Alpha Platform
> boots is a long way... And I think we should reduce that to a minimum...
To state it one more time, booting an alpha is not a very straight
forward operation. Alphas were built to be more powerful and flexible than
PCs, but with that comes a price. With proper documentation (which is
nearly present), good boot floppies, and a bit of courage installing Linux
on an Alpha is not hard, even at this current time. TTYL.
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| "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." |
| --- Philippians 1:21 (KJV) |
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| Ryan Kirkpatrick | Boulder, Colorado | rkirkpat@nag.cs.colorado.edu |
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