Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 18:07:27 -0700 From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> To: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> Cc: Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, obrien@FreeBSD.ORG, Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>, alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: borked Alpha boot loader? Message-ID: <20000510010727.CB4B01CE5@overcee.netplex.com.au> In-Reply-To: Message from "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> of "Tue, 09 May 2000 18:09:55 MDT." <20000509180955.A9715@panzer.kdm.org>
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"Kenneth D. Merry" wrote:
> On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 16:59:14 -0700, Mike Smith wrote:
> > > Does anyone have any ideas for recovering it, other than trying to netboo
t
> > > it off another box? (I don't have any other Alpha boxes I could put the
> > > disk into, and DEC Unix on that machine doesn't seem to want to boot for
> > > some reason.)
> > >
> > > I actually saved the working loader as /boot/loader.works, but using the
> > > -file option to SRM's boot command doesn't seem to work.
> >
> > When the box boots, you get a couple of seconds pause after SRM has
> > finished spewing at you and before the loader loads. Hit a key and
> > you'll get the emergency boot: prompt. Type '/boot/loader.works' and you
> > should be in business.
>
> Unfortunately that doesn't work. I can hit all sorts of keys, but they
> don't get me a boot prompt.
I had that problem a while ago. My original install had a broken set of
bootblocks that didn't accept they keyboard break as expected. I had never
got around to refreshing them with a disklabel -B da0.
I ended up getting out of it by:
- creating an alpha boot floppy using the SRM "bootable" checksum tweaks
on an i386. You could once do this by manually activating the
#ifdef __alpha code to calculate the checksum.
- I got the old loader and bootblocks etc from beast.freebsd.org I think.
- I do not remember from there, I'm pretty sure I was able to boot from
floppy ("boot eva0" ?), then change the root device to the disk and load
the kernel from there.
Cheers,
-Peter
--
Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
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