Installing on a Alpha XL 300

[Adam Mercer]

Hi

At work I've been given the task of installing Debian on an old Alpha
XL 300 that is currenty running Red Hat 6.2. I have never installed
Linux on a non x86 plaform before so am having quite a lot of
difficulty.

>From what I can gather from the documentation I need to create a
bootable floppy and then boot of this to start the install. The
documentation (http://debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch04s02.html.en)
says that the image for this floppy is dependant on the specific
Alpha, which I believe for the XL 300 is xlt, and can be found in the
following location:

<ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/disks-alpha/current/MILO/>

There doesn't seem to be any MILO directory, not even a disks-alpha
directory. Where can I find these disk images?

Am I on the right track with this? Does anyone know of some simple
step by step instructions for installing on Alpha?

Cheers

Adam


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[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 03:22:06PM -0500, Adam Mercer wrote:

> At work I've been given the task of installing Debian on an old Alpha
> XL 300 that is currenty running Red Hat 6.2. I have never installed
> Linux on a non x86 plaform before so am having quite a lot of
> difficulty.
>
> >From what I can gather from the documentation I need to create a
> bootable floppy and then boot of this to start the install. The
> documentation (http://debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch04s02.html.en)
> says that the image for this floppy is dependant on the specific
> Alpha, which I believe for the XL 300 is xlt, and can be found in the
> following location:
>
> <ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/disks-alpha/current/MILO/>
>
> There doesn't seem to be any MILO directory, not even a disks-alpha
> directory. Where can I find these disk images?
>
> Am I on the right track with this? Does anyone know of some simple
> step by step instructions for installing on Alpha?

As far as I know, debian has not actually worked on MILO machines since
Debian 3.0.  I certainly never managed to get it to work on my alphas.
My machines that use SRM instead of ARC and hence don't use milo work
fine of course.

As far as I know the XL 300 doesn't have SRM and hence only works with
milo which pretty much means it doesn't work.

You could try install Debian 3.0 and then upgrading from there, although
you would have to point the installer at the debian archives to get the
files it needs.  It might work.

--
Len Sorensen


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[Steve Langasek]

Hi Adam,

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 03:22:06PM -0500, Adam Mercer wrote:

> At work I've been given the task of installing Debian on an old Alpha
> XL 300 that is currenty running Red Hat 6.2. I have never installed
> Linux on a non x86 plaform before so am having quite a lot of
> difficulty.

> >From what I can gather from the documentation I need to create a
> bootable floppy and then boot of this to start the install. The
> documentation (http://debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch04s02.html.en)
> says that the image for this floppy is dependant on the specific
> Alpha, which I believe for the XL 300 is xlt, and can be found in the
> following location:

> <ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/disks-alpha/current/MILO/>

> There doesn't seem to be any MILO directory, not even a disks-alpha
> directory. Where can I find these disk images?

> Am I on the right track with this? Does anyone know of some simple
> step by step instructions for installing on Alpha?

Sorry, this pointer to MILO isn't supposed to be there; MILO hasn't been
supported for at least three releases now, because it's based on an ancient
Linux kernel that can no longer be built from source.  And it looks like I
have a fix for that part of the manual that never got committed; I'll take
care of that ASAP. :/

According to the table at
<http://debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch05s01.html.en>, the xl and xlt
systems don't support SRM, which means you can *only* boot Linux on them
using MILO.  The only remaining site I know of for downloading MILO is
<http://milo.core-systems.de/>; but once you get the MILO images, you're
still pretty much on your own for getting Debian installed using it, since
there's no support for this in the installer.

--
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@...                                     vorlon@...


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[Bob Tracy]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 04:36:58PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 03:22:06PM -0500, Adam Mercer wrote:
> > At work I've been given the task of installing Debian on an old Alpha
> > XL 300 (...)
> >
> > Am I on the right track with this? Does anyone know of some simple
> > step by step instructions for installing on Alpha?
>
> (...)
> As far as I know the XL 300 doesn't have SRM and hence only works with
> milo which pretty much means it doesn't work.
>
> You could try install Debian 3.0 and then upgrading from there (...)

Len is spot-on.  See the following link:

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch05s01.html.en

It basically says you're stuck with the ARC console firmware and you'll
have to use MILO to install an older release of Debian, say, "woody".
>From there, you *should* be able to do an upgrade to 5.0 ("lenny").

Good luck!  Let us know how it goes...

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Tracy          |  "Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand."
rct@...       |   -- Bill Kennedy
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[Adam Mercer]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 15:36, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense@...> wrote:

> You could try install Debian 3.0 and then upgrading from there, although
> you would have to point the installer at the debian archives to get the
> files it needs.  It might work.

Thanks, I've found the woody images just got to find another machine
with a floppy drive now :-)

Cheers

Adam


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[Adam Mercer]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 15:57, Bob Tracy <rct@...> wrote:

> Len is spot-on.  See the following link:
>
> http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch05s01.html.en
>
> It basically says you're stuck with the ARC console firmware and you'll
> have to use MILO to install an older release of Debian, say, "woody".
> From there, you *should* be able to do an upgrade to 5.0 ("lenny").
>
> Good luck!  Let us know how it goes...

Thanks I think I'll need it!

Cheers

Adam


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[Paul Slootman]

On Tue 14 Apr 2009, Steve Langasek wrote:

> Sorry, this pointer to MILO isn't supposed to be there; MILO hasn't been
> supported for at least three releases now, because it's based on an ancient
> Linux kernel that can no longer be built from source.  And it looks like I

Note that the kernel version MILO is built from isn't related to the
kernel version it can boot. I have kernel 2.6.17.11 running on my xlt,
and I boot that using a MILO from 2002.

I wouldn't be surprised if that MILO could boot a more recent kernel,
but this is my firewall / mail server / dns server so I'm not going to
experiment...

> According to the table at
> <http://debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/ch05s01.html.en>, the xl and xlt
> systems don't support SRM, which means you can *only* boot Linux on them
> using MILO.  The only remaining site I know of for downloading MILO is
> <http://milo.core-systems.de/>; but once you get the MILO images, you're
> still pretty much on your own for getting Debian installed using it, since
> there's no support for this in the installer.

As long as you can start the installation with a boot (kernel) floppy
and a root floppy (compressed root image that gets loaded into ramdisk),
it shouldn't be a problem. At least, that's how it used to be done :)

I guess I should start making images of my root filesystem... That disk
has been spinning for >10 years :-)


Paul Slootman


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[Wouter Rademaker]

Hi,

Have you tried this?
The Alpha Miniloader (MILO) Howto:
http://alphalinux.org/faq/


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Wouter Rademaker

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