Very Computer

I follow Digital's instructions in their Jensen-HOWTO to the letter (ok, so
I use A:\ instead of eisa(0)disk(0)fdisk(0) because it's been set in the
firmware), and I've run into a problem...

When I run copyboot from the ARC Utilities disk to put the modefied 1.3.72
kernel on the boot device it terminates abnormaly.

Text screen dump:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------

WARNING!!! This program overwrites the initial sectors of
           the selected destination device.  This may destroy
           some or all of the existing data on the device.
           Are you ABSOLUTLY CERTAIN that you wish to continue? yes
Checking available devices...
sda = scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)
sdb = scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)

Enter source device name: /dev/fd0
Enter destination device name: /dev/sda
Hit ENTER to start copying...
Opening eisa(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)...
Opening scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)...
Read error on inmut device: status = 8
Press any key to continue

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------

Now I'm guessing that my floppy's shot, but I've re-formatted it as FAT and
run it through Windows2000 scandisk with no errors showing up, and my
notebook (Slackware 7.0.0) can't fsck it cause it's just a raw image.

I've tried other floppies as well and the result is the same. it seems to
generate the error around block 720 of the floppy. These disks I'm using are
1.44MB HD disks, the drive is a 2.88MB ED drive, but I've never had any
problems with it before.

TIA.

Joseph Millman ->

<snip>
</snip>

OK, fixed the prob. with copyboot (it seems to work, and terminates
properly), however now I've got a new one :))

I reset the Console to OSF and power-cycle as directed.
upon completion of the POST check the boot continues, and it checks out as
OK, and the kernel loads automatically. However after detecting the SCSI
devices (1 1.2GB HP drive (/dev/sda) 1 406MB DEC drive (/dev/sdb) and a DEC
CD-ROM (/dev/scd0)) The lines I'm most interested in are as follows:

---

Partition check:
 sda: sda1 sda2
 sdb: sdb1
kernel: unaligned trap at fffffc0000380e78: fffffc0007fccc09 29 4
kernel: unaligned trap at fffffc0000380fa0: fffffc0007fccc11 29 2
kernel: unaligned trap at fffffc000038104c: fffffc0007fccc11 29 2
[MS-DOS FS Rel. 12,FAT 12,check=n,conv=b,uid=0,umask=022,bmap]
kernel: unaligned trap at fffffc0000381334: fffffc0007fccc11 29 1
[me=0x61,cs=1152,#f=129,fs=40960,fl=33552,ds=43792,de=55817,data=47296,se=29
268,
ts=910368648,ls=12336]
Transaction block size = 512
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:02

---

I'm guessing this time I'm missing my file system, which isn't much of a
surprise as I haven't actually had a chance to format anything.

/dev/sda1 is the 4MB boot partition
/dev/sda2 is the 1.28GB ext2 partition
/dev/sdb1 is the 406MB ntfs partition (used for filestore, but will become
/home or swap or something...)

a dump of what minlabel displays for my partitions:

---

WARNING!!! This program overwrites the initial sectors of
           the selected destination device.  This may destroy
           some or all of the existing data on the device.
           Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that you wish to continue? yes
Checking available devices...
sda = scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)
sdb = scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)
Device to partition: /dev/sda
/dev/sda -> scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)
                                              # /dev/sda
type: 8
disk: , label: sda
flags:
bytes/sector: 512    sectors/track: 64
tracks/cylinder: 16    Sectors/cylinder: 1024
cylinders: 2585    sectors/unit: 2647080
rpm: 3600    interleave: 1
trackskew: 0    cylanderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # milliseconds
drivedata: 0

8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   Size(Kb)   Size(Mb)
  1:     8192        0      boot       4096       4.0   # (Cyl.    0 - 7)
  2:  2376744     8192      ext2    1188372    1288.5   # (Cyl.    8 -
2585*)
  3:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)
  4:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)
  5:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)
  6:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)
  7:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)
  8:        0        0    unused          0       0.0   # (Cyl.    0 - -1)

---

^
|
This is just minlabel's default...

now to look ahead: I found that the pseudo-bootdisk for RedHat seems to be a
bit small (a'la unexpected EOF). anyone know if this is intentional, and if
not anyone have a complete copy?

TIA
Joseph Millman ->

 Yeah I figured that out after a good evening of whacking my head against my
monitor and swearing at the tower :)) Actually my problem was that although
my system config said the drive was a 2.88ED the system didn't think so (the
reason for it terminating at cylander 720)

 I switched to Michael Schwingen's Jensen-HOWTO and although it's ~4 years
old, I can at least boot now (kinda). Still having some probs installing,
but I'm sure I'll figure it out after a while...

"Martin Ostermann"