Alpha Newbie needs help netbooting linux

[Jay Estabrook]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 02:07:24PM -0500, Timothy Lin wrote:
> 
> I've got several Alphaserver 2100 that needs to be retrofitted with newer
> scsi drives so I can put Linux on it as a cluster. The scsi card that came
> with the machine is too old and doesn't seems to support newer scsi
> drives, so I tried to add adaptec 2940U2W series cards into them.
> However, the SRM bios can't see them but once I boot into Linux using RH
> CD images, the drives are totally functional, which means I can't use them
> as  bootdisks, and since the original drives from digital are mostly
> failing,  I need to rely on netboot to serve the boot images, then I can
> access all the files on local disks.
> 
> Can someone give me a few pointers on how to do it ?
> I've been googling for quite a few days and have yet to find anything
> helpful :(

First, you need to set up a DHCP server somewhere to serve the BOOTP image
to the SABLE.

Then, create the BOOTP kernel image via first a normal kernel build,
then issue:

	make bootpfile    # uncompressed image so fairly large
	make bootpzfile   # compressed image but only on recent versions

Grab the image from arch/alpha/boot/bootpfile (or bootpzfile) and
supply it to the DHCP server, renaming as appropriate.

>From the SRM console, issue:

  >>> boot ewa0 -file <image name> -flags "root=/dev/whatever"

NOTES:

1. building drivers into the kernel (ie the 2940U2W driver for one)
   is HIGHLY recommended (for simplicity's sake :-) over having to
   build and boot with an INITRD.

2. "ewa0" is assumed to be the NIC that is connected to the network
    where the DHCP server is located.

Good luck.

 --Jay++

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Jay A Estabrook                            HPTC - LINUX support
Hewlett-Packard Company - ZKO2-3/N30       (603) 884-0301
110 Spit Brook Road, Nashua NH 03062       Jay.Estabrook at hp.com
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