Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 04:49:09 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Problem with FreeBSD on AlphaStation 255/233 Message-ID: <20001012044909.E87859@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <200010120144.SAA12166@usr09.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 01:44:11AM %2B0000 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010111751020.52023-100000@beppo.feral.com> <200010120144.SAA12166@usr09.primenet.com>
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On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 01:44:11AM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote:
> Identifying what needs to be done is half the battle. I have an
> old, slow Alpha box off of OnSale, which I may be willing to get
> a new scratch disk for, to work on the problem, if the soloution
> is known, just not yet implemented.
There are known problems on the Alpha.
1. Disklabels are incorrectly marked read-only at times. `dd' had to
have a hack added to it to get around this -- and lately it often
doesn't. Thus ``dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1'' typically doesn't work
if the disk had say AlphaLinux on it.
2. ``disklable'' asts about as useless as `dd' on a DU or AlphaLinux
labeled disk.
3. Libdisk freaks out if the disk you are installing to already had
another OS on it. Sysinstall acts as if libdisk called exit().
4. Our current slice code isn't layered (thus allowing one to bypass
it). Instead it is so intertwined with the rest of the disk code, it
isn't apparent how to dike it out for the Alpha case.
You supply patches to fix any of these and I will force them them into
the tree. The current situation is pretty bad.
--
-- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
GNU is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
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