Netboot cross-compiled kernel

Greg Lewis glewis at misty.eyesbeyond.com
Mon Aug 11 07:53:49 PDT 2003


On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 05:22:13PM -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 10:51:59AM -0600, Greg Lewis wrote:
> > I grabbed the 4.8 miniiso and unpacked it in a suitable directory and
> > put in an fstab with just a root NFS mount (for now).  After setting up
> > bootp and tftp the machine does boot, only to have the GENERIC kernel
> > panic trying to mount root:
> 
> You'll probably have a much easier time getting started with FreeBSD on
> Alpha if you're willing to just do a normal disk install. :-)
> 
> The EB164 is well supported and you should have no problems running
> FreeBSD on it.

Well, I'd sort of prefer netbooting as I can then switch between 4.x and
5.x to test things fairly easily.  I can also switch to {Net,Open}BSD just
as easily.  All of which are appealing :).  Especially given the machine
has a single 4G disk.

> > Is there something else I need to do when cross building, or does it not
> > work in 4.x?  I did notice the cross-build compiles code with -mcpu=ev4
> > where the CPU identifies during boot as:
> > 
> > CPU: EV56 (21164A)
> > 
> > Is this a problem?  I.e. should I do the build with -mcpu=ev56?
> 
> Not a problem.  You'll get better performance with -mcpu=ev56, but all
> Alpha's can run ev4 code.

Thats what I thought, thanks for confirming it :).

> > Its running SRM 4.8, although that seems to be working fine in terms of
> > the netbooting getting going and I'm loathe to upgrade unless I need to
> > after having bad experience trying to get SRM working on an LX board.
> 
> Getting SRM inititally instaled on a machine with AlphaBIOS only can be a
> PITA -- but upgrading your SRM from SRM is quite straight forward and
> easy.

Fair enough.  The previous experience was indeed trying to move from
AlphaBIOS to SRM.

Thanks for the response.  I think I'm going to download and burn the
rescue disk then boot from that and try to build a netbootable kernel
on the Alpha rather than cross-compiling.  If that doesn't work I'll
probably obtain another disk and install on that.

-- 
Greg Lewis                          Email   : glewis at eyesbeyond.com
Eyes Beyond                         Web     : http://www.eyesbeyond.com
Information Technology              FreeBSD : glewis at FreeBSD.org



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