Re: Alpha Linux

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Michael Kiker wrote:

> To All,
> I have an AlphaStation 425 that I have been trying to get Redhat Linux
> on without success. It came to me with the SRM console installed and I
> was able to boot from a floppy with Redhat 5.1. I then decided that I
> wanted to be able to dual boot Windows NT and replaced the SRM console
> with the ARC console. I can now boot Windows NT but not Linux. I tried
> every version of MILO I could find with Redhat 5.1, 5.2 and 7.1 with no
> luck. I have tried to return to the SRM console with no luck either.
>
> It's been a year since I've tried but I'm going to give a try again
> soon. I was just wondering if there are any Alpha experts out there that
> might be able to help with this.
>
> I used to do some OSF1 sys admin years ago but have moved out of that
> into DBA work lately, so my sys admin skills are a little rusty.

I think Debian has some documentation on installing Linux with
ARC/Alphabios and MILO. Red Hat hasn't supported running that way in
quite some time though (although I would think 5.x should have installed
okay).

Unless you have a compelling need to dual boot into windows, I would stick
with SRM. MILO is based on ancient PAL code from the EBSDK, which is very
old and was beta even when it was released way back when (ten years ago?
I'm not sure). In a nutshell, your system won't run as well vs. if you
ran SRM.

Something else to consider is that if you just want an open source unix to
play with, Linux on the Alpha has only a tiny fraction of the developer
interest it used to have. Lately I've had much better success running
FreeBSD on my two Alphas (as200 and 164LX) than Linux. If you want to
stick with Linux, I would suggest Debian--I think they have the most
active development going on for Alpha right now.

Mike
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Received on Mon Mar 15 10:12:29 2004