From owner-freebsd-alpha Sat Sep 11 9:57:32 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from doorman.brann.org (remote-brann-gw.nyc.dsl.access.net [166.84.145.254]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD1E214D6E for ; Sat, 11 Sep 1999 09:57:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from john@brann.org) Received: from freebie.brann.org (freebie.brann.org [10.0.0.2]) by doorman.brann.org (8.9.2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA58805 for ; Sat, 11 Sep 1999 12:25:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from john@localhost) by freebie.brann.org (8.9.2/8.9.2) id OAA07997 for freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org; Wed, 8 Sep 1999 14:46:52 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from john) Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 14:46:52 -0400 From: John Brann To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Installing on an old Alpha without a floppy Message-ID: <19990908144652.A7900@freebie.brann.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.3i Organization: Not while I'm at home Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hi, I have access to an old alpha workstation (a 266, I think) which I'd like to try FreeBSD on. uname -mrsv shows: OSF1 V3.2 41 alpha The machine has no floppy drive, and its CD seems not to be working (attempts to mount a CD are greeted with I/O errors). I read recently a trick for booting from the swap partition, so I downloaded the boot.flp image, shut down to single user mode, dd'd the floppy into the swap partition. I then rebooted and resirected the boot to the swap partition by specifying the device node name. The message I got was 'Invalid a.out image' (I'm paraphrasing) That made me think that the boot loader could only load an a.out kernel, and that I'm stuck. Any other ideas, or is anything obviously wrong here? John Please cc me, I'm not on the alpha list. -- Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, finger john@doorman.brann.org for pgp public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message