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List:       freebsd-alpha
Subject:    RE: Install on Multia Problems (SUCCESS)
From:       Doug Rabson <dfr () nlsystems ! com>
Date:       1999-03-29 8:26:27
[Download RAW message or body]

On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Mark Gooderum wrote:

> Thanks to the helpful response from everyone.  I was successful with an FTP
> install, although the process was a little odd.
> 
> I had to boot with a serial console using the 4.0 snapshot (I used the
> latest one).  If I boot with the "graphics" (real) console, 4.0 seems to not
> take any keyboard input when it gets to the terminal type prompt.
> 
> By booting with the serial console, I was able to use something with VT100
> emulation as well which solved my terminal oddnesses and let me get
> installed.  In general, the syscons driver still doesn't seem quite right.
> The Multia comes up with a 48 line by 132 column display.  Even with sttying
> the right size, the terminal emulation in even VI seems off, VI always has
> the cursor off by one and the screen doesn't update right except w/CTRL-L.
> 
> Haven't gotten around to getting X and everything else configured, but it's
> up.
> 
> Although now I'm intrigued...I'm labeled with a FreeBSD label.  The Alpha
> Kernel seems to support FDISK labels just fine, just not the SRM console
> load code.  So I'm curious if the the 2nd or 3rd level boot block could be
> put on a FAT partition on an FDISKed disk (ala MILO and Linux) and FreeBSD
> booted that way using ARC instead of SRM.  This would allow multi-booting
> with Linux or NT similar to a PC, it would also allow a hard disk based
> media install as well.  Hmmm.

Unfortunately, the FDISK and SRM data structures overlap in the first disk
block.  It isn't possible to make a disk bootable with SRM without
corrupting the FDISK partition table.

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037




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