Hi,
I've just installed Mandrake on my alpha (thanks for the iso).
My alpha is a Personal Workstation, otherwise known as "miata".
The install went pretty smooth, but there are some glitches (most
of them related to my setup).
Here's how it went:
I first made a 5Mb partition on the "target" disk (sdc in my situation).
I mode it with the AlphaBios software, and formatted it there (FAT16).
I'm planning to use this partition to store linload.exe and milo.
I then booted off of the CDrom + floppy
boot scd0:/boot/instboot.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 mdkinst rw
ramdisk_size=32000
This uses the linload.exe and milo off of the cdrom and then loads in a
ramdisk
from floppy. The ramdisk I used is /boot/network.rdz (dd to floppy
beforehand).
It booted and I chose for http install. It found my networkcard (the
onboard 21143 chip)
and I gave it a static IP. The install over http went fine from there.
The parts that had problems are the following:
1) Create bootdisk:
I got the following error:
an error occurred
mkbootdisk failed
on console alt-f3: exec of mkbootdisk failed: no such file or directory.
lilo.pm line 51.
I beleive there is no such thing as mkbootdisk for the alpha
(arch-excluded).
2) Install bootloader:
Q: Do you want to use aboot?
A: Yes.
What it then does / is supposed to do is not clear to me...
3) Configure X:
I chose "Iiyama 9017ET". I then got the following error:
no valid modes found
try with another videocard or monitor.
Alt-F1: VertRefresh
^^^^^^^^^^^
Horizontal sync value expected.
Alt-F3: warning X probeonly failed at /usr/.....
I then tried the "default" 1024x768 monitor and that worked fine.
This could mean that it's not an alpha related problem.
Then the install was completed.
I then wanted to boot using the following milo paramters:
boot sdc3:/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdc3
It then shows:
boot/vmlinuz path component is not a directory
Failed to load the kernel.
Booting with:
boot sda2:/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdc3
Does work (sda2:/boot/vmlinuz is the location of the kernel on
my old installation).
This last problem is the one that stops me from being able to
boot mandrake... I don't know if it's a milo problem or something
else (maybe you're not allowed to boot from sdc)... The strange
thing is that I can do a "ls sda2:/boot" and not a "ls sdc3:/boot"
(it gives the "boot/vmlinuz path component is not a directory" error).
Maybe I should put the "target" disk on SCSI ID 0....
I also couldn't find anything on the axp-list or milo HOWTO that
points at a sollution or shows a similar case...
Stefan van der Eijk
