HOW TO BOOT The README file in the Red Hat 4.0 axp directory says: | Once MILO has been installed, you can boot this CD as follows: | | boot -t iso9660 scd0:kernels/file.gz root=/dev/scd0 | | where file.gz is the proper kernel for your machine (see kernels/README | for information). Unfortunately, there is no "kernels/README" file, so we at Yggdrasil are providing one. Page 25 of the Red Hat installation includes a list of supported hardware along with translations to their code names. Here is list of code names given on pages 25 and 26 of the Red Hat installation manual, and our informed guesses at the corresponding kernel names. Gzip'ed postscript and HTML versions of The Red Hat Users Guide are in the Users-Guide directory on this CD-ROM. You can also purchase a printed copy by calling Red Hat Software Inc. (http://www.redhat.com). PRODUCT CODE NAMES KERNEL Alpha PC64 Cabriolet, Aspen Telluride cab.gz AxpPC133 Noname noname.gz EB64+ Aspen Alphine eb64+.gz EB66 NekoTech Mach1 eb66.gz EB66+ --- eb66+.gz DEC PC150, 2000model300, cullean Jensen jensen.gz Multia, UDB ("Universal noname noname.gz Desktop Box") AlphaStation 200,250, 255, 400 Avanti avanti.gz EB164 Aspen Avalance, Timberline, eb164 Summit, Microway Screamer Platform 2000 from Kinetics Platform2000 p2k.gz PC164 Durango pc164.gz Alcor AlphaStation 500, 600, alcor.gz Maverick, Brett Alpha-XL xl xl.gz Alpha-XLT (XL 300, XL 366) xlt xlt.gz Mikasa (AlphaServer1000) mikasa mikasa.gz AlphaServer 1000A is not supported according to the RedHat manual. Another file that has useful information about the booting process on Alpha boxes is Linux-Alpha/ARCHIVES/BLADE_0.3/install_guide.txt on this CD-ROM in Linux Internet Archives. While its purpose is to describe how to boot the BLADE-0.3 Alpha Linux distribution (also included in this CD-ROM), it does give some insight into how the ARC boot loader works. For documentation on SRM (Digital's earlier boot loader), the README file in the Red Hat 4.0 axp directory says, "More information on SRM booting can be found on http://www.redhat.com", but you might also want to look at the file azstarnet/docs/srm.txt on this CD-ROM. Indeed, the whole azstarnet/docs directory is quite educational. If you are using the SRM bootloader, you should be happy to know that isomarkboot was run on this CDROM image (Red Hat put lxboot in the "misc" directory), so you should be able to use the SRM console to boot directly from this CDROM with a commands like: boot dka600 -flags i [...about 10 lines of status messages...] aboot> /kernels/mikasa.gz root=/dev/scd0 In this example, the CDROM is SCSI ID 6, and the type of Alpha box is a Mikasa AlphaServer 1000. Replace the number 6 (in "dka600") with the SCSI ID of your CDROM drive and replace "mikasa.gz" with the appropriate kernel name for your machine. The argument "root=/dev/scd0" sets the root device to be the first SCSI CDROM. It is important that you include the leading slash in "/kernels/mikasa.gz" (or "/kernels/noname.gz", or whatever is appropriate for your hardware). The system will boot if you omit the leading slash; however, the Red Hat install will get confused in its last phase when it tries to copy the kernel to your hard disk. If you just want to boot directly to a Linux shell prompt with no other initialization, try adding the kernel argument "init=/bin/sh", like so: boot dka600 -flags i [...about 10 lines of status messages...] aboot> /kernels/mikasa.gz root=/dev/scd0 init=/bin/sh KNOWN PROBLEM Here is one final note about the Red Hat 4.0 axp Linux distribution. The RedHat/by-group and RedHat/sets subdirectories on this CD-ROM contain 659 dangling symbolic links (not counting the 10 dangling links due to our removal of the components listed in the README.REDHAT file in the top level directory of this CD-ROM). This appears to be because the version numbers of the modules that they point to were upgraded while the symbolic links in the "sets" and "by-group" directories were not (for example, RedHat/sets/X_Windows/x.023 points to RPMS/xpm-3.4f-4.axp, but xpm-3.4h-3.axp.rpm is the version in the RPMS subdirectory). This problem does not appear in the Sparc or i386 releases. This was not an error introduced in our production of the Linux Internet Archives CD-ROM's. Before anybody decides to be too critical of Red Hat, it should be noted that these links were intended only for users who need to copy parts of the distribution to a hard drive, that Red Hat's new components scheme makes that more difficult anyway, and that their installation process has never used these links. Also, it was awfully nice of Red Hat to let us distribute their axp distribution on Linux Internet Archives without paying a royalty. So, if you are going to contact Red Hat about this problem, please do so only in the most positive way: submit a fix. They have been informed of this problem. We could have delayed the release of Linux Internet Archives for a few weeks of development and beta testing to reconstruct the links in a way that the resulting floppy sets still each fit on a single diskette and that software was being installed in the right order, and that all of the references to these links had been found and updated. However, Linux Internet Archives is supposed to be snapshots of free software from FTP sites, not our Linux distribution. In addition, this could have left our customers unable to synchronize with the rest of the Red Hat 4.0 axp users if and when an official fix to this problem is released. So, we are providing this FTP snapshot essentially unmodified. FURTHER TECHNICAL SUPPORT (SOLD SEPARATELY) If you want to speak to a member of the Yggdrasil technical staff about anything in Linux Internet Archives, you can do so purchasing technical support from us. To purchase technical support, please call 1-800-261-6630 (+1 408 261 6630 internationally), or fax +1 408 261 6631, or email support@yggdrasil.com. If you just have a quick question, then call 1-900-446-6075 ext. 835 ("TEK"), 9am-5pm Pacific Time, which costs US$2.95 per minute. The back cover of Linux Internet Archives describes our technical support services in more detail. Our complete contact information is as follows: Yggdrasil Computing, Inc. 4880 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 205 San Jose, California 95129-1034 United States of America +1 408 261 6630 (toll free: +1 800 261 6630) fax +1 408 261 6631 info@yggdrasil.com http://www.yggdrasil.com Happy hacking!