Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19
For reference, the recipe at: The recipe at https://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2019/11/msg00033.html for adding firmware to the install disk did indeed work. I booted with the modified install disk in the SCSI CD drive and the original in a second IDE CDROM drive that runs on a PCI card. While the installer could not see the SCSI CDROM drive with the install disk in it once control was handed over from the initial boot (step where it looks for install media initially failed), it could see the IDE CDROM and then switched to that for the rest of the install. Worked well.
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19
> > Interesting. I've just checked on my running XP1000 and I see there > is no /dev/fd0 either. I'm running a self-compiled 5.6.3 kernel and > the floppy module is built. Modprobing it loaded it and then I have > a /dev/fd0 device node. What's more it works --- I managed to list > the directory of an old floppy disk! Woah. Haven't done that for > very many years. > > Checking the debian built kernel install (5.5.0-1-alpha-generic), > the floppy driver is indeed built. > > So is the floppy module included in the install ISO, and, if so, > can you run insmod on it to enable the floppy drive while > installing? > > Cheers, > Michael. That was a great suggestion! I looked for all the .ko files, and there is no floppy.ko on the CD, and nothing that looks like it might be the same under a different name. So the floppy module would be a great addition to the install image. Thanks Darren
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19
My experience with the April 2020 Alpha iso Booted fine, asked for me to load qlogic/1040.bin on removable media. I downloaded the deb file for buster, exploded it and copied all the bin files onto both a floppy and a USB stick. The AlphaServer 1200 has a USB card in a PCI slot. Put both the USB and the floppy into the Alpha Said yes, look for files on removable media. It did not seem to poll either the USB or the floppy (eg floppy light never came on; USB LED was on but never flashed) Then I got the same screen about loading firmware from removable media. Exited to shell. # find /dev -iname "*usb*" /dev/bus/usb # find /dev -iname "*fd*" /dev/fd There is no device (fd0) for the floppy in /dev. # mountmedia fails, complaining that /dev/fd0 does not exist dmesg showed that Debian has noticed the USB PCI card and the memory stick and read off the vendor and product IDs, but the volume was not mounted anywhere. lsusb is missing from busybox, but lspci shows the USB controller no worries. # blkid -c /dev/null shows no output at all /dev/disk contains only by-path/ and the entry in here corresponds to the CDROM drive the install disk is in, there are no other devices listed. I am happy to hear suggestions on how to get the firmware into the installer. The lack of media makes it hard to capture the installer output, dmesg output or anything like that. I can try if that is likely to help. Cheerio
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19
> > You can add the firmware files manually during installation with a > floppy disk. The installer asks during installation if you want > to provide additional firmware using removable media. > Thanks for that The floppy disk controller did not work either, I recall clearly. I tried a PCI USB card, IDE CD, SCSI CD and putting the files on a second HDD. None of the storage was visible to the Debian installer. If this might have changed, I will happily try again with the new image. I spent quite a lot of time trying things. I cannot recall whether I dropped to a prompt, mounted the FDD by hand and then went back into the installer. Perhaps I'll try that. Anyway, I don't wan to clutter up the list with that, I'll just go and try it. Best wishes D./
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2020-04-19
On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 4:30 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > > Hi! > > I just uploaded updated installation images 2020-04-19 for the > following Debian Ports architectures [1]: > > * alpha > * hppa > * ia64 > * m68k > * powerpc > * ppc64 > * sparc64 > > These images should finally fix the installation process on Apple > PowerMacs and PowerBooks compatible with GRUB, so basically every > Macintosh using the New World ROM [2]. > That's great! Thanks again for all your troubles. A question: When I last tried an install on an Alpha, qlogic firmware for the storage was missing (eg SCSI disks, CD etc). Does the Alpha image have any new firmware compared to the previous iteration? Best wishes Darren
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-11-22
Just recording this simpleton's experience. I booted the 22 Nov image. AlphaServer1200 It boots fine, but asks for qlogic 1040.bin firmware on removable media. The system has a PCI card that controls an IDE HDD and an IDE CDRW, plus a SCSI CDROM (that I boot off) plus a floppy drive plus a PCI USB card and a few SCSI HDD. the boot messages show the USB -- including identifying the device, eg SanDisk CRUZ. But when I try to load the firmware from removable media (USB, floppy, CD), there is no evidence of any removable media even being accessed/polled. No CD lights come on, no floppy light comes on, no USB stick LEDs come on. It does initialise the network (DEC tulip). I tried putting s CD with firmware into the SCSI CDROM drive and mounting it manually on /cdrom, but the installer still does not see it, though I can look at it in the shell. I am thinking I am going to have to make my own installer, since apparently the DFSG prevent the requisite firmware going on the disk. I'm not a complete newbie, but I am not a developer or sysadmin. I've read around a bit, but a pointer to the most useful guide to adding stuff to the iso and burning my own version would be helpful. I assume I have to mount the iso, unpack the initramfs image and add stuff in there, but it's a bit daunting. I'm not asking anyone to do it for me, but an pointer to a good tutorial or how-to would help. I've found some stuff on the Debian pages and elsewhere, but no luck so far. Cheerio Darren
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-11-17
I plan to give it a go if I can find the time. Thanks from me too On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 3:08 PM Skye wrote: > > I concur. Kudos for your work on this! > > > > Skye > > > > From: Gianluca Bonetti [mailto:gianluca.bone...@gmail.com] > Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 7:04 AM > To: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org > Cc: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org > Subject: Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-11-17 > > > > Absolutely need to say you... thank you very much for your work!!! > > Very happy to see up to date installer for all of those architectures! > > Will test Alpha and PPC as soon as possible! > > Great job! > > Thank you! > > gl > > > > Il giorno dom 17 nov 2019 alle ore 10:37 John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > ha scritto: > > Hi! > > I just uploaded updated installation images 2019-07-04 for the > following Debian Ports architectures: > > * alpha > * hppa > * ia64 > * m68k > * powerpc > * ppc64 > * sh4 > * sparc64 > > Those have not been tested, so let me know if there are any issues: > > > https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-11-17/ > > Adrian > > -- > .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org > `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de > `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-05-09
On Fri, May 10, 2019 at 2:23 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > > Hello! > > *snip* > > * alpha >- There have been reports about missing firmware for storage devices. > The firmware required for these devices is located in the > "firmware-linux" and "firmware-linux-nonfree" packages but currently > don't have a floppy driver in debian-installer to load additional > firmware. I will figure out how to build CD images including firmware > similar to the images available for i386 and amd64. >- The images now includes the pata-modules package so users previously > missing PATA drivers should be able to install their machines now. Hi, just summarising my experience with latest (10 May) media. I have an AlphaServer 1200 with a couple of SCSI HDD and a couple of IDE HDD running off a PCI card. It also has a SCSI CDROM and an IDE CD/DVD, the latter running off the same PCI card. I burned 2 copies of the CD image and put one in each CD drive. The SRM console can only boot the SCSI drives, and I could successfully boot the CD. When it got to the point of scanning for hardware, the installer found the disc in the IDE CDROM (but not the SCSI drive) and was able to continue the installation by using the second disc. It found the Ethernet (tulip) as well. When it came to disk partitioning, the installer could see the IDE HDDs but not the SCSI ones. I was able to install onto the IDE drives but since SRM cannot boot them that's not a full solution. As previously, the installer asked me to install firmware from removable media, in this case qlogic/1040.bin, and at some point I was some output mentioning missing qla1280. So these SCSI firmware seem to be the only real issue at the moment, assuming the required kernel modules are also available. Sorry for not posting logs. I could I guess post them by booting the Debian 5.0 disk and mounting the one I am trying to install Deb 10 to. If you think that would be any use, tell me. I don't want to fill up the list with redundant material. Thanks again for all the effort going into keeping Alphas alive! Darren
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-04-09
Hi Frank I don't have a PCI USB card, though perhaps I should invest in one. Nearly everything now is PCI-E, so something secondhand, I guess. Many thanks On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 9:24 AM Frank Scheiner wrote: > > On 4/16/19 14:55, Darren Goossens wrote: > > Hi, and thanks for the inte3resting discussion. > > > > Yes, the QLOGIC chip seems to be the issue. The Debian 5 installer > > works flawlessly. I used full disk not netinstall for that. > > I believe at that time the Linux kernel (tree) still included a lot of > firmware files. These remaining in-tree firmware files were removed with > [1]. And the `qlogic/1040.bin.ihex` firmware file was among them. > > [1]: > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b38923a068c10fc36ca8f596d650d095ce390b85 > > Not sure though, if this was also the case for the Linux kernel in Lenny. > > > I cannot say what would work best for the most people, and thus be > > best place to put your efforts, but I do know that the floppy works on > > this machine (AlphaServer 1200), though in Deb 5 I had to modprobe > > floppy first. > > A PCI to USB adapter could also work and avoid the size limitations of > floppy disks - if you have one at hand. > > Cheers, > Frank
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-04-09
Hi, and thanks for the inte3resting discussion. Yes, the QLOGIC chip seems to be the issue. The Debian 5 installer works flawlessly. I used full disk not netinstall for that. I cannot say what would work best for the most people, and thus be best place to put your efforts, but I do know that the floppy works on this machine (AlphaServer 1200), though in Deb 5 I had to modprobe floppy first. I'd note that the firmware package (.deb) containing the qlogic stuff is too big to fit on a 1.44MB floppy, but if the installer can read the files from a directory structure as well as from a deb file, then the deb can be exploded and the files put on several disks -- or just the required files on a singe one. As long as individual files are lass than disk capacity, this might act as a workaround to keep the Debian kernel untainted. Thus, it would be interesting to make floppy.ko available, and possibly autoloaded, inside the initramfs on the installer. (Sorry if I've got some terminology wrong, I'm not a system programmer or anything). Plainly, it would be great if the firmware was already in there, but if it cn't be Older disks boot ok (I have a recollection of booting Debian 9 and 8 as well, from http://backup.parisc-linux.org/debian-cd/debian-8.0/alpha/ -- probably the CD-1 rather than the netinst. So I am guessing there must be an alternative. Many thanks Darren On 4/16/19, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > On 4/16/19 1:06 PM, jhcha54008 wrote: >> As far as I understand, it seems that booting a SCSI >> drive (disk, cdrom) on alpha needs a (non-free) >> firmware for the QLOGIC chip (see the thread >> following [1] for an example and the answer of Michael Cree) > > I see. I wasn't aware of that, thanks. > >> This firmware should be loaded somehow : embedded in >> the (tainted) kernel (as suggested in [1]), included >> in the initramfs or loaded from a floppy at boot time >> (if the floppy drive is still functional and there is >> a floppy driver in the kernel). > > We cannot really include stuff in the kernel as the kernel > is the official Debian kernel and thus must therefore to the > Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). > >> These firmwares are packaged in : firmware-qlogic (non-free) >> which is not mirrored on ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports >> but on regular mirrors. > > Yes, those firmware packages can be used by adding something like: > > deb [arch=all] http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable contrib non-free > > to your sources.list. For the installer, we could include the firmware > on the CD the same way the unofficial Debian installation CDs do that > but that will probably not help us if the firmware is required to access > the firmware. > > It would be interesting to test an old Debian installation CD when Alpha > was still an officially supported architecture. We need to find out how > it was done back then. > >> Many thanks for all this work towards a (smoothly) working >> install CD for alpha - and especially for fixing the generic >> kernel and assembling the CD >> (I am not able to test currently, sorry) > > You're welcome. It's a community effort, so I'll just say that on > behalf of everyone involved :). > > Adrian > > -- > .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org > `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de > `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 > -- - Brittle Gum Editing darren.gooss...@gmail.com https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/brittle-gum-editing/
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-04-09
Hi What I am doing is not time critical, so I am happy to wait. If I can perform a useful function as a somewhat naive tester, I am happy to. Many thanks Darren
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-04-09
Hi THere The image I downloaded was the ~250MB image from https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-04-09/ (the URL in the posting to the mailing list) debian-10.0-alpha-NETINST-1.iso Here is most of the output of show dev in the SRM console and some other output from logging into the Debian 5 install I have on one of the hard disks (lspci -v and lsmod). qlogic was what the installer asked for (so I guess the module would be qla1280), but of course I don't know what else it might have asked for had I got deeper into the install.Apologies for the length of this posting. I'm a bit out of my depth. --- SRM console: P00>>> show dev polling ncr0 (NCR 53C810) slot 1, bus 0 PCI, hose 1 SCSI Bus ID 7 dka400.4.0.1.1 DKA400 RRD461337 polling floppy0 (FLOPPY) PCEB - XBUS hose 0 dva0.0.0.1000.0 DCA0RS23 polling isp0 (QLogic ISP10X0) slot 0, bus 2 PCI, hose 0SCSI Bus ID 7 Then some stuff about the HDDs polling tulip0 (DECchip 21140-AA) slot 3,b bus 0 PCI, hose 1 --- Logged into Debian 5: $ sudo lspci -v :00:01.0 EISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82375EB/SB PCI to EISA Bridge (rev 15) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 248 Kernel driver in use: pci_eisa :00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2064W [Millennium] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Flags: stepping, medium devsel, IRQ 16 Memory at 0234 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Memory at 0280 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M] Expansion ROM at 0232 [disabled] [size=64K] Kernel modules: matroxfb_base :00:03.0 Mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20262 (FastTrak66/Ultra66) (rev 01) Subsystem: Promise Technology, Inc. Ultra66 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 248, IRQ 20 I/O ports at 9040 [size=8] I/O ports at 9050 [size=4] I/O ports at 9048 [size=8] I/O ports at 9054 [size=4] I/O ports at 9000 [size=64] Memory at 0230 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K] Expansion ROM at 0233 [disabled] [size=64K] Capabilities: [58] Power Management version 1 Kernel driver in use: Promise_Old_IDE Kernel modules: pdc202xx_old :00:04.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21050 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 248 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 8000-8fff Memory behind bridge: 0220-022f :01:00.0 SCSI storage controller: QLogic Corp. ISP1020 Fast-wide SCSI (rev 02) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 248, IRQ 24 I/O ports at 8000 [size=256] Memory at 0221 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Expansion ROM at 0220 [disabled] [size=64K] Kernel driver in use: qla1280 Kernel modules: qla1280 0001:02:01.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c810 (rev 02) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 255, IRQ 56 I/O ports at 28000 [size=256] Memory at 20224 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Kernel driver in use: sym53c8xx Kernel modules: sym53c8xx 0001:02:03.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21140 [FasterNet] (rev 20) Subsystem: Digital Equipment Corporation Device 500a Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 255, IRQ 44 I/O ports at 28400 [size=128] Memory at 202241000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128] Expansion ROM at 20220 [disabled] [size=256K] Kernel driver in use: tulip Kernel modules: tulip 0001:02:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 06) Subsystem: Ensoniq Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI64V, AudioPCI128 Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 48 I/O ports at 28480 [size=64] Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1 Kernel modules: snd-ens1371 --- $ sudo lsmod Module Size Used by nls_utf84448 1 isofs 47456 1 zlib_inflate 19992 1 isofs udf 112056 0 nls_base 11956 3 nls_utf8,isofs,udf crc_itu_t 4480 1 udf ppdev 12080 0 parport_pc 35480 1 lp 15064 0 parport50488 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp ipv6 385968 18 loop 20816 0 snd_ens137132672 0 gameport 17312 1 snd_ens1371 snd_ac97_codec133516 1 snd_ens1371 snd_pcm_oss53989 0 snd_mixer_oss 21945 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm
Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-04-09
Hi Sorry If I am replying in the wrong way, I tried to understand how these lists work but I always seem to get it wrong. I have tried to use the Alpha netboot image. It booted very nicely, but then I got the message that I needed to load some firmware from removable media -- in this case, qlogic/1040.bin. The installer did not detect the CDROM drive, which is a standard SCSI one that came with the AlphaServer. I put the files on a floppy (AlphaServer 1200 does not have USB) but there is no floppy kernel module on the installer, so it could not read the floppy. So I'm kind of stuck. Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Darren
