Re: Swapping AlphaBIOS with SRM on SX running RH5.2

[Ettore Aldrovandi <ettore fm sissa it>]

Hi Andrei,

> I may want to tinker with *BSDs, so I'm thinking to give SRM
> a try.
 
> Could someone comment on what I need to do to preserve
> my current RH installation which boots from AlphaBIOS and
> to make it to install from newly installed SRM ?

you need an sx164srm.rom image to go with a fwupdate.exe 
on a DOS formatted floppy to make the switch. As far as I know 
the exe's on DEC (oops, Q) site can only do the firmware upgrade 
of a pre-existing srm, possibly because they are too big to fit 
on a single floppy with a .rom image.  

With a .rom image plus .exe you can do the switch from AlphaBIOS. 

SRM will need to find a disklabel on the hard drive, if you want
to boot from it. It is possible to switch the partition table to
a disklabel by using sdisklabel.

Loic Prylli posted a one-line script to produce the necessary
commands automatically on the debian-alpha list:

http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-alpha-9904/msg00009.html

You'll need to use aboot. Follow the SRM-howto. Installing aboot
will very likely blow the FAT where you hold MILO, so change the
fstab accordingly: what was partition n will become n-1
afterwards. 

If you plan to play with BSD, the question of switching an SX to
SRM has been discussed in detail on the FreeBSD alpha list. 

Good luck,
	Ettore
--
Ettore Aldrovandi -- SISSA/International School for Advanced Studies 
Via Beirut 2/4, I-34013 Trieste, Italy  
ph: [+] 39 0403787445 -- fax:[+] 39 0403787528 
ettore@fm.sissa.it aldrovan@sissa.it http://www.sissa.it/~aldrovan