Seriously. I just experienced the first "flawless" boot of my Alpha in
over two years. All devices initialized and came up perfectly,
including in particular the network interfaces, the X11 graphical login
screen, all configured file systems, and even the hardware clock.

The latter has been an issue for some time, and until today, hadn't
survived a reboot without me having to manually reset it from the system
clock.

Current kernel is 5.3.0, built from the kernel.org source tree with the
gcc-9.2 compiler and associated current (unstable release) tool chain.

--Bob

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Congrats! Can you tell us how you got to that point? I need to bring up a series of servers next week and dreading my ignorance. They are currently running an old release of Red Hat.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Tracy [mailto:rct@gherkin.frus.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2019 3:01 PM
To: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: congratulations in order

Seriously. I just experienced the first "flawless" boot of my Alpha in
over two years. All devices initialized and came up perfectly,
including in particular the network interfaces, the X11 graphical login
screen, all configured file systems, and even the hardware clock.

The latter has been an issue for some time, and until today, hadn't
survived a reboot without me having to manually reset it from the system
clock.

Current kernel is 5.3.0, built from the kernel.org source tree with the
gcc-9.2 compiler and associated current (unstable release) tool chain.

--Bob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 04:15:17PM -0600, Skye wrote:

Congrats! Can you tell us how you got to that point? I need to bring up a series of servers next week and dreading my ignorance. They are currently running an old release of Red Hat.

Short answer: up-to-date Debian "sid" (unstable) on a PWS 433au with
a kernel built from the latest kernel.org source tree.

Longer answer: your mileage *will* vary, depending on your hardware.

The hardest part of "getting to that point" is going to be bootstrapping
from nothing. The debian-alpha archives have *many* postings that will
attest to that :-(. I probably missed it, but we might have an install
CD at this point that includes enough of the needed drivers to
accomplish an installation. If not, the known traditional trouble spots
are video and disk controller support. If you clear that hurdle,
successfully partitioning hard disks on alpha is more difficult than it
should be, and depends entirely on what tool you choose: recent "fdisk" versions on alpha are broken -- see the debian-alpha archives for
workarounds.

If all else fails, you can try either the last official Debian release
for alpha, or maybe a Gentoo boot CD. I would encourage you to try the
latest Debian CD though... and document here exactly what doesn't work
so there's a chance of getting it fixed. Upgrading from the ancient
Debian stable release *will* be problematic, and I can't really
recommend that option.

--Bob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 08:44:01AM -0500, Bob Tracy wrote:

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 04:15:17PM -0600, Skye wrote:

Congrats! Can you tell us how you got to that point? I need to bring up a series of servers next week and dreading my ignorance. They are currently running an old release of Red Hat.

Short answer: up-to-date Debian "sid" (unstable) on a PWS 433au with
a kernel built from the latest kernel.org source tree.

Longer answer: your mileage *will* vary, depending on your hardware.

The hardest part of "getting to that point" is going to be bootstrapping
from nothing. The debian-alpha archives have *many* postings that will attest to that :-(. I probably missed it, but we might have an install
CD at this point that includes enough of the needed drivers to
accomplish an installation.

The generic kernel has been fixed. The install CD should work except
if you need non-free firmware such as the qlogic firmware. If you have
USB that gives a way of supplying the firmware to the installer.

If not, the known traditional trouble spots
are video and disk controller support.

You can always install by serial port and bring up the video later.
In particular, if you have a radeon card you will need to build your
own kernel with an inbuilt radeon driver to bring up full video.

If you clear that hurdle,
successfully partitioning hard disks on alpha is more difficult than it should be, and depends entirely on what tool you choose: recent "fdisk" versions on alpha are broken -- see the debian-alpha archives for workarounds.

Use parted. I believe the install disk now uses that.

Cheers,
Michael.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Thank you! That is very helpful information. I will post my results here.

Skye

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Cree [mailto:mcree@orcon.net.nz]
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2019 12:53 PM
To: Bob Tracy
Cc: Skye; debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: congratulations in order

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 08:44:01AM -0500, Bob Tracy wrote:

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 04:15:17PM -0600, Skye wrote:

Congrats! Can you tell us how you got to that point? I need to bring

up a

series of servers next week and dreading my ignorance. They are

currently

running an old release of Red Hat.

Short answer: up-to-date Debian "sid" (unstable) on a PWS 433au with
a kernel built from the latest kernel.org source tree.

Longer answer: your mileage *will* vary, depending on your hardware.

The hardest part of "getting to that point" is going to be bootstrapping
from nothing. The debian-alpha archives have *many* postings that will attest to that :-(. I probably missed it, but we might have an install
CD at this point that includes enough of the needed drivers to
accomplish an installation.

The generic kernel has been fixed. The install CD should work except
if you need non-free firmware such as the qlogic firmware. If you have
USB that gives a way of supplying the firmware to the installer.

If not, the known traditional trouble spots
are video and disk controller support.

You can always install by serial port and bring up the video later.
In particular, if you have a radeon card you will need to build your
own kernel with an inbuilt radeon driver to bring up full video.

If you clear that hurdle,
successfully partitioning hard disks on alpha is more difficult than it should be, and depends entirely on what tool you choose: recent "fdisk" versions on alpha are broken -- see the debian-alpha archives for workarounds.

Use parted. I believe the install disk now uses that.

Cheers,
Michael.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi!

On Nov 13, 2019, at 6:22 PM, Skye <skye@20maguire.com> wrote:

Does anyone know when a release CD will be posted with the most recent fixes?

I will try to do that over the weekend. I have to look into fixing the firmware issues.

Adrian

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Does anyone know when a release CD will be posted with the most recent
fixes?

Normally, I have no issue building the install kit but with my workstations unable to boot I am not in a position to do that.

Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Tracy [mailto:rct@gherkin.frus.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2019 7:44 AM
To: Skye
Cc: debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: congratulations in order

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 04:15:17PM -0600, Skye wrote:

Congrats! Can you tell us how you got to that point? I need to bring up

a

series of servers next week and dreading my ignorance. They are currently running an old release of Red Hat.

Short answer: up-to-date Debian "sid" (unstable) on a PWS 433au with
a kernel built from the latest kernel.org source tree.

Longer answer: your mileage *will* vary, depending on your hardware.

The hardest part of "getting to that point" is going to be bootstrapping
from nothing. The debian-alpha archives have *many* postings that will
attest to that :-(. I probably missed it, but we might have an install
CD at this point that includes enough of the needed drivers to
accomplish an installation. If not, the known traditional trouble spots
are video and disk controller support. If you clear that hurdle,
successfully partitioning hard disks on alpha is more difficult than it
should be, and depends entirely on what tool you choose: recent "fdisk" versions on alpha are broken -- see the debian-alpha archives for
workarounds.

If all else fails, you can try either the last official Debian release
for alpha, or maybe a Gentoo boot CD. I would encourage you to try the
latest Debian CD though... and document here exactly what doesn't work
so there's a chance of getting it fixed. Upgrading from the ancient
Debian stable release *will* be problematic, and I can't really
recommend that option.

--Bob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hello Adrian,

There is no rush. I am just excited to finally be able to reimage my AlphaStations ;-)

Thank you for all of your hard work!

Skye

-----Original Message-----
From: John Paul Adrian Glaubitz [mailto:glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de]
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:31 AM
To: Skye
Cc: Bob Tracy; debian-alpha@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: congratulations in order

Hi!

On Nov 13, 2019, at 6:22 PM, Skye <skye@20maguire.com> wrote:

Does anyone know when a release CD will be posted with the most recent fixes?

I will try to do that over the weekend. I have to look into fixing the firmware issues.

Adrian

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)