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altivoOn the Alpha, Gentoo is only slightly less frustrating than OpenBSD. While it's clear that the system is (or can be) much more functional and usable than OpenBSD, the documentation is about equally poor.
I have a whole page listing downright errors and misinformation in the installation instructions for Alpha systems now. The worst of these is a section on preparing disk drives that turns out to be just plain wrong. The "fdisk" utility supplied in their CD image cannot do what they say it can. Worse, it will corrupt your disk labels if you already have them. Booting from a hard disk using the Alpha SRM console firmware and aboot loader requires BSD style disk labels. MSDOS type partition tables will not work. Linux fdisk a few years ago was capable of generating or updating either one, but apparently the BSD capability has been removed or somehow disabled. In the end, I had to initialize a SCSI drive using OpenBSD (ironic, I know) in order to get it in a format that the Alpha could boot from.
Then there's the kernel build. The distribution CD image does boot, and has a kernel capable of doing most things necessary. The installation procedure strongly recommends building a custom kernel suited to your particular hardware. This is not bad advice, as I well know. It produces a leaner, much more efficient kernel that uses a lot less memory and boots more quickly.
Unfortunately, the information on configuring said kernel is sadly vague. I tried four times, then went the alternate route of letting their utility "genkernel" configure a kernel for me. That was a waste of time. The configuration produced that way wouldn't even compile.
I finally extracted the configuration from the kernel provided on the installation to use as a model for my own. In the process I discovered that the distribution kernel was last compiled on Gentoo version 3.17.7, while the actual software I'm installing is version 4.0.5. Sure enough, when I tried using that configuration file as is to produce a kernel on the current system, it also failed. The errors seem to indicate that the resulting code is too large for the linkage editor to handle. This is understandable, since it includes drivers for every disk controller and NIC known to man or woman, and a few unknown even to the geekiest of users. A NIC made by "Happymeal"? Surely this didn't need to be included. I deselected all of the drivers except for the normal DEC devices that are actually included in my hardware. Now the kernel does compile, and in half the time. It even almost boots, but locks up near the end of the I/O device initialization and I'm still trying to figure out why.
As with OpenBSD, there seem to be no supporting people available who actually have Alpha hardware or know anything about the Alpha branch. I wonder if I'm the first one to actually attempt a new Alpha install since the release came out in January of this year... In fact, I wonder if it was tested at all, given what I've discovered about the instructions and the fdisk program.
Not giving up yet, because I really do want this to work. But: I've been managing UNIX and Linux systems since 1989 or so. I used Slackware, which is almost as geeky a distro as Gentoo, on my own desktop for many years. If I'm having this much trouble getting Gentoo running, there's definitely something wrong and it isn't just with me.
I have a whole page listing downright errors and misinformation in the installation instructions for Alpha systems now. The worst of these is a section on preparing disk drives that turns out to be just plain wrong. The "fdisk" utility supplied in their CD image cannot do what they say it can. Worse, it will corrupt your disk labels if you already have them. Booting from a hard disk using the Alpha SRM console firmware and aboot loader requires BSD style disk labels. MSDOS type partition tables will not work. Linux fdisk a few years ago was capable of generating or updating either one, but apparently the BSD capability has been removed or somehow disabled. In the end, I had to initialize a SCSI drive using OpenBSD (ironic, I know) in order to get it in a format that the Alpha could boot from.
Then there's the kernel build. The distribution CD image does boot, and has a kernel capable of doing most things necessary. The installation procedure strongly recommends building a custom kernel suited to your particular hardware. This is not bad advice, as I well know. It produces a leaner, much more efficient kernel that uses a lot less memory and boots more quickly.
Unfortunately, the information on configuring said kernel is sadly vague. I tried four times, then went the alternate route of letting their utility "genkernel" configure a kernel for me. That was a waste of time. The configuration produced that way wouldn't even compile.
I finally extracted the configuration from the kernel provided on the installation to use as a model for my own. In the process I discovered that the distribution kernel was last compiled on Gentoo version 3.17.7, while the actual software I'm installing is version 4.0.5. Sure enough, when I tried using that configuration file as is to produce a kernel on the current system, it also failed. The errors seem to indicate that the resulting code is too large for the linkage editor to handle. This is understandable, since it includes drivers for every disk controller and NIC known to man or woman, and a few unknown even to the geekiest of users. A NIC made by "Happymeal"? Surely this didn't need to be included. I deselected all of the drivers except for the normal DEC devices that are actually included in my hardware. Now the kernel does compile, and in half the time. It even almost boots, but locks up near the end of the I/O device initialization and I'm still trying to figure out why.
As with OpenBSD, there seem to be no supporting people available who actually have Alpha hardware or know anything about the Alpha branch. I wonder if I'm the first one to actually attempt a new Alpha install since the release came out in January of this year... In fact, I wonder if it was tested at all, given what I've discovered about the instructions and the fdisk program.
Not giving up yet, because I really do want this to work. But: I've been managing UNIX and Linux systems since 1989 or so. I used Slackware, which is almost as geeky a distro as Gentoo, on my own desktop for many years. If I'm having this much trouble getting Gentoo running, there's definitely something wrong and it isn't just with me.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 05:24 am (UTC)It sounds unfortunate! Not surprising (as you've already more or less mentioned)—even the SDF has switched over from Alpha to AMD64 nowadays. I don't know where one can buy or rent time on Alpha hardware nowadays at mass-market prices, so any volunteer maintainer community seems like it'd gradually vanish, and so would the commercial ones if it's not cost-effective… bleh.
At least ARM is having some luck preventing the digital world from being entirely subsumed by x86. I'm hoping to see a lot more 64-bit ARM showing up in a few years.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 10:38 am (UTC)The huge success of the Raspberry Pi is encouraging, and I've found their newest little machine with the quad core ARM processor most interesting and capable but it doesn't draw me in the way an Alpha does. I know this sounds absurd, but in a way my interest in computer hardware takes the place of the fascination most Americans seem to have with automobiles. (Ho hum, those bore me.)
So I've been using my Raspberry Pi 2 as an X-terminal for the Alpha, and I'm still chipping away at Gentoo, which is potentially a powerful platform but cumbersome to set up and hampered by terrible documentation.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 05:19 pm (UTC)Note that this isn't at all a complaint about your post or you, Altivo - far from it! Just me being amused by the depths of my own ignorance, with which I am completely fine :) Everyone has their areas of interest, expertise, and verbosity! This post is yours, and I'm good with that!
I hope you manage to reconcile all the fiddly bits inherent in the operation you are trying to perform. Satisfaction not guaranteed, but perhaps it is achievable!
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 06:53 pm (UTC)I am trying to install a reasonably modern UNIX type operating system and desktop environment on my DEC Alpha workstation. A previous post addressed the misrepresented "capabilities" of OpenBSD, which turned out to be unusable for my purposes.
Linux would be fine, but the one I have on there is about 6 years old and no longer supported at all. So I'm now attempting to install a different Linux distribution, Gentoo. (Not going so well, alas.)
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 07:21 pm (UTC)For things like building Linux boxes it wouldn't have mattered significantly if I had started at the beginning anyway. If we want some really interesting crossover we should discuss creating music some time - though it's been a long time since I've studied theory!
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote