Subject: FAQ/

From: Olaf Zaplinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 00:08:46 +0100

Hi all,

can someone please point me to a Howto/FAQ? I'd like to put Linux on my SNI
RM200 machine (R4600, 64MB). Can I use the Hardhat distribution, or does it
run on SGIs only?

Olaf

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From: Florian Lohoff <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:57:23 +0100

> RM200 machine (R4600, 64MB). Can I use the Hardhat distribution, or does it

The RM200 was supported only in little endian mode with the Windows NT
firmware - Nobody knows (chance is little) if the tree will still work.

You will need the decstation root not the hardhat tarball as that
is strictly big endian.

Flo
-- 
Florian Lohoff                  [email-masked]             +49-5201-669912
     Why is it called "common sense" when nobody seems to have any?

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From: Olaf Zaplinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 01:37:34 +0100

Where do I find it? I saw the debian-mipsel dist on ftp.rfc822.org, but as
there is no doc at all, this dist is unusuable... perhaps I am lucky with
that, I strongly dislike the Debian dist.

Olaf

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From: Jan-Benedict Glaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 01:41:36 +0100

> that, I strongly dislike the Debian dist.

Try searching for 'declinux'.

MfG, JBG

-- 
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/* Jan-Benedict Glaw <[email-masked]> -- +49-177-5601720 */
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     "insmod vi.o and there we go..." (Alexander Viro on linux-kernel)

---

From: Jan-Benedict Glaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 02:00:43 +0100

> that, I strongly dislike the Debian dist.

Btw, what kind of doc do you expect? The MIPS port is, well, everything
but a "customer linux" right now. It's more-or-less working for
people who know what they do. There's no installer comparable to
a regular PC installation (insert boot CDROM, press enter sometimes,
ready). Everything you can expect is a tarball, which can be
mounted via nfsroot. There you can find a kernel inside which you
can boot over bootp/tftp (or via mop, if you have not so much luck).
Then, you can locally fdisk/mkfs/mount your HDDs and copy everything
by hand. That's the installation.

Anything else still needs to be written. I've started an approach
of a clean debian root filesystem (ftp.lug-owl.de) you may want
to try. However, Debian is currently the only distribution supporting
those machines at all. The declinux image is heavily outdated and
ships a totally broken libc with it... It's no fun!

MfG, JB"Nur die Harten komm'n in'n Garten, alle Weichen geh'n in Teich!"G
PS: http://oss.sgi.com/mips/mips-howto.html

---

From: [email-masked] (H.Heinold)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 02:29:55 +0100

> PS: http://oss.sgi.com/mips/mips-howto.html

Hm I am still working on the boot floppies for debian, when I have the time.
for mipsel they should work, but I only build them for mips.
the problem on mips was the sgi disklabel, but that isnt used on dec. 

-- 

Henning Heinold

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From: Olaf Zaplinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 02:39:23 +0100

Huh, I don't expect comfort. But I expect a x68 Linux users guide to the
world of MIPS systems. Okay, I know my RM 200 quite well, had compiled
several progs under Sinix, put it in LE mode and installes WinNT 4.0. I use
Linux since the 0.something kernel. The problem is that the Debian WWW site
consists of lots of "404" errors. On the ftp site there is no docu at all
that would tell me how to proceed. For Hardhat, I have found this
information.

What I want: a documentation of the form:

- how to prepare your bootp server
- how to boot the kernel via bootp
- how to start some install script *or* boot your mini-dist/root-fs via NFS,
fdisk, cp and enjoy

That would be enough.

Olaf

Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
>   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature

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From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 03:34:38 +0100

> the problem on mips was the sgi disklabel, but that isnt used on dec. 

But SGI's don't have floppies :-)

  Ralf

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From: Jan-Benedict Glaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 07:50:17 +0100

> But SGI's don't have floppies :-)

Question in charge: Do DECstations really have floppies? Mine do
not... So vor me it's only relevant to have an nfsroot.tgz allowing
me to install further packages...

MfG, JBG

---

From: Jan-Benedict Glaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 07:57:53 +0100

> - how to prepare your bootp server

Install bootp (or dhcpd, which can do bootp as well) and read its
documentation.

> - how to boot the kernel via bootp

This is specific to your machine's firmware.

> - how to start some install script *or* boot your mini-dist/root-fs via NFS,

less  ./linux/Documentation/nfsroot.txt

~~VeryShortVersion~~:
- Activate "IP Auto Configuration" in "Networking Options"
- Build NFS directly into your kernel; there, also activate NFS-Root
  support
- "root=/dev/nfs" as one command option when booting the kernel (this
  is the easyest method). Then, the client mounts /tftpboot/<IP-Addr>
  from the server which did the bootp reply. Otoh, you could
  configure your bootp server to provide a different boot server
  or boot path.

fdisk and cp (btw, you should better use tar in a pipe for that...)
should be no problem...

MfG, JBG

---

From: Harald Koerfgen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 10:21:18 +0100 (CET)

> me to install further packages...

Besides Maxines DECstations don't have floppies. Well, there are some with SCSI
floppies but that doesn't count.

Anyway, everything that fit's on a floppy would fit into a ramdisk as well.
Compile this ramdisk image into the kernel, boot with "root=/dev/ram", et
voila...

Working on "boot floppies" *does* make sense, IMHO.

-- 
Regards,
Harald

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From: Karel van Houten <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:12:16 +0100 (MET)

> ships a totally broken libc with it... It's no fun!

I have a much newer one ready, but I don't have upload permission
anymore on oss.sgi.com. I've asked Quentin and Ralf to arrange this,
but nothing yet... As soon as I can put files on oss again,
I'll upload my new RH6.1 based root image.

-- 
Karel van Houten

----------------------------------------------------------
The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better."
I can't understand why it won't work on my Linux computer. 
----------------------------------------------------------

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From: Karel van Houten <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:14:49 +0100 (MET)

> - how to start some install script *or* boot your mini-dist/root-fs via NFS,

Have you looked at my DECStation installation HOWTO?
http://www.xs4all.nl/~vhouten/mipsel

-- 
Karel van Houten

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From: Karsten Merker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 10:03:13 +0100

> me to install further packages...

Well - the Maxine (Personal DECstation) has a floppy controller and it was
possible to order it with a floppy disk drive installed, but I have not
seen one of these in real life yet :-).

Greetings,
Karsten
-- 
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Nach Paragraph 28 Abs. 3 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz widerspreche ich der Nutzung
oder Uebermittlung meiner Daten fuer Werbezwecke oder fuer die Markt- oder
Meinungsforschung.

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From: [email-masked] (H.Heinold)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:32:54 +0100

hi,

sorry for the missunderstanding. I meant the debian-bootfloppies and
only the initrd which can be transfer with the kernel over tftp. I know
sgi's only have flopticals. wiht the so called bootfloppies you will
be able to install debian as on the other arch's.
-- 

Henning Heinold

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From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 16:28:03 +0100

On Sun, Dec 17, 2000 at 10:21:18AM +0100, Harald Koerfgen wrote:

> Besides Maxines DECstations don't have floppies. Well, there are some with
> SCSI floppies but that doesn't count.

Well, a few Indys were shipped with 3.5" SCSI floptical drives which afaik
have 20mb capacity.

  Ralf

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From: Klaus Naumann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:19:56 +0100 (CET)

> Well, a few Indys were shipped with 3.5" SCSI floptical drives which afaik

Indeed, I even own such a nifty thing. It's pretty cool, with one problem:
No media ;-) . But it's able to read floppies, I'm altough not sure
if it will boot.

		CU, Klaus

-- 
Full Name   : Klaus Naumann     | (http://www.mgnet.de/) (Germany)
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Phone / FAX : ++49/177/7862964  | E-Mail: ([email-masked])
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---

From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 19:24:37 +0100

> No media ;-) . But it's able to read floppies, I'm altough not sure

In theory it can.  In practice every machine I've ever is violating the
ARC standard massively, so only trying will show.  For Indys probably the
prefer installation media will stay NFS or CDROM for all times.  Now if the
darn thing would just handle ISO9660 CDROMs ...

  Ralf

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From: Vince Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 13:32:12 -0500 (EST)

> No media ;-) . But it's able to read floppies, I'm altough not sure

I've used an SGI personal-Iris 4D/35 which had a real floppy drive.  Of
course, I guess it's questionable whether the docs will ever surface to
port Linux to it.  It had a 36Mhz R3000 processor in it if I recall.

Vince

____________
\  /\  /\  /  Vince Weaver          
 \/__\/__\/   [email-masked]     http://www.glue.umd.edu/~weave

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From: Warner Losh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:33:51 -0700

In message <[email-masked]> Jan-Benedict Glaw writes:
: Question in charge: Do DECstations really have floppies?

Yes.  I've used them with floppies.

Warner

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From: Warner Losh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:34:29 -0700

In message <[email-masked]> Harald Koerfgen writes:
: Besides Maxines DECstations don't have floppies. Well, there are some with SCSI
: floppies but that doesn't count.

I don't know if the floppies I used were scsi or not and I no longer
have access to the machines to check :-)

Warner

---

From: Florian Lohoff <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 11:59:19 +0100

> But SGI's don't have floppies :-)

The package is only called "boot-floppies" - It doesnt have much in common
with "floppy" images on architectures not having floppy drives. It more
or less the debian installer source package. They for example
build kernel/ramdisk images with the installer for architectures
capable of bootp/tftp like Sun SPARC. We will do similar for
Decstations and SGI and forget the "real" disk images. The problem is
that most of the software is more or less custom debian and will require
some work concerning SGI Disklabel, Kernel 2.4 etc - Henning has done
a lot in there and hopefully Decstations are much simpler (DOS Disklabel)

But still - The biggest problems are glibc, gcc + binutils.

Flo