I got sent a quick heads up about a post on firstwork systems, where the author details the steps needed to install, and boot up the installer, and then get the rest of it running.
Very cool stuff!
I pulled down debian-5010-alpha-netinst.iso, and extracted /boot/vmlinuz & /boot/initrd.gz .. Decompressed vmlinuz, and booted away! Â For anyone who want’s it, my minimal install is here. Â All things considered, it works well!
$ ./qemu-system-alpha -hda alpha.disk -kernel vmlinux -append ‘console=ttyS0’ -initrd initrd.gz -L pc-bios/ -nographic -net nic -net user -drive file=debian-5010-alpha-netinst.iso,if=ide,media=cdrom
PCI: 00:00:0 class 0300 id 1013:00b8
PCI: region 0: 10000000
PCI: region 1: 12000000
PCI: 00:01:0 class 0200 id 8086:100e
PCI: region 0: 12020000
PCI: region 1: 0000c000
PCI: 00:02:0 class 0101 id 1095:0646
PCI: region 0: 0000c040
PCI: region 1: 0000c048
PCI: region 3: 0000c04c
[ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.26-2-alpha-generic (Debian 2.6.26-29) ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.1.3 20080704 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-25)) #1 Sun Mar 4 21:08:03 UTC 2012
[ 0.000000] Booting GENERIC on Tsunami variation Clipper using machine vector Clipper from SRM
[ 0.000000] Major Options: MAGIC_SYSRQ
[ 0.000000] Command line: console=ttyS0
[ 0.000000] memcluster 0, usage 1, start 0, end 11
[ 0.000000] memcluster 1, usage 0, start 11, end 16384
[ 0.000000] freeing pages 11:2048
[ 0.000000] freeing pages 2987:16384
[ 0.000000] reserving pages 2987:2988
[ 0.000000] Initial ramdisk at: 0xfffffc0007b28000 (5076756 bytes)
[ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 16272
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: console=ttyS0
[ 0.000000] PID hash table entries: 512 (order: 9, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.000000] HWRPB cycle frequency bogus, and unable to estimate a proper value!
[ 0.000000] Using epoch = 2000
[ 0.000000] Turning on RTC interrupts.
[4194001.858529] Console: colour VGA+ 80×25
[4194001.860482] console [ttyS0] enabled
[4194001.865365] Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 131072 bytes)
[4194001.865365] Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 65536 bytes)
[4194001.871224] Memory: 117120k/131072k available (2162k kernel code, 13728k reserved, 3314k data, 304k init)
[4194001.899544] Security Framework initialized
[4194001.900521] Capability LSM initialized
[4194001.900521] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[4194001.905404] Initializing cgroup subsys ns
[4194001.907357] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
[4194001.907357] Initializing cgroup subsys devices
[4194001.918099] net_namespace: 1208 bytes
[4194001.920052] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[4194001.926888] EISA bus registered
[4194001.928841] pci: enabling save/restore of SRM state
[4194001.939583] Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
[4194001.953255] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[4194001.964974] IP route cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 8192 bytes)
[4194001.967904] TCP established hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 65536 bytes)
[4194001.967904] TCP bind hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 32768 bytes)
[4194001.968880] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
[4194001.968880] TCP reno registered
[4194001.972787] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[4194001.975716] checking if image is initramfs… it is
[4194003.320442] Freeing initrd memory: 4957k freed
[4194003.323372] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
[4194003.323372] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 8192 bytes)
[4194003.325325] msgmni has been set to 238
[4194003.327278] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253)
[4194003.327278] io scheduler noop registered
[4194003.327278] io scheduler anticipatory registered
[4194003.329231] io scheduler deadline registered
[4194003.329231] io scheduler cfq registered (default)
[4194003.330208] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards…
[4194003.750129] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
[4194003.767708] Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
[4194003.769661] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[4194003.782356] brd: module loaded
[4194003.784309] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
[4194003.784309] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
[4194003.787239] mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
[4194003.792122] TCP cubic registered
[4194003.792122] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[4194003.793098] registered taskstats version 1
[4194003.793098] drivers/rtc/hctosys.c: unable to open rtc device (rtc0)
[4194003.795051] Freeing unused kernel memory: 304k freed
[4194003.889778] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0
[4194011.195438] Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver
[4194011.195438] ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
[4194011.204227] CMD646: IDE controller (0x1095:0x0646 rev 0x07) at PCI slot 0000:00:02.0
[4194011.204227] CMD646: UltraDMA capable
[4194011.205204] CMD646: 100% native mode on irq 28
[4194011.205204] CMD646: IDE port disabled
[4194011.206180] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.0 to 64
[4194011.206180] ide0: BM-DMA at 0x8040-0x8047
[4194011.596805] hda: QEMU HARDDISK, ATA DISK drive
[4194012.325320] hdb: QEMU DVD-ROM, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[4194012.378055] hda: UDMA/33 mode selected
[4194012.378055] hdb: UDMA/33 mode selected
[4194012.379031] ide0 at 0x8050-0x8057,0x8062 on irq 28
[4194012.554812] hda: max request size: 512KiB
[4194012.556766] hda: 4194304 sectors (2147 MB) w/256KiB Cache, CHS=4161/255/63
[4194012.558719] hda: cache flushes supported
[4194012.559695] hda: unknown partition table
[4194012.663211] hdb: ATAPI 4X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache
[4194012.665164] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
Starting system log daemon: syslogd, klogd.
OpenBSD also supports SMP on Alpha now too 🙂
sadly the OpenBSD kernel just shuts down Qemu, with no error messages.
OMG This is best news ever. Maybe one day it will boot Windows NT. Has anyone tried booting it with ARC BIOS?
I haven’t tried any NT firmware… As this method boots the kernel directly. I’ve tested OpenBSD which shutsdown the emulator right away, and booting NetBSD only gets me this:
$ alpha-softmmu/qemu-system-alpha -L pc-bios/ -kernel netbsd -nographic
PCI: 00:00:0 class 0300 id 1013:00b8
PCI: region 0: 10000000
PCI: region 1: 12000000
PCI: 00:01:0 class 0200 id 8086:100e
PCI: region 0: 12020000
PCI: region 1: 0000c000
PCI: 00:02:0 class 0101 id 1095:0646
PCI: region 0: 0000c040
PCI: region 1: 0000c048
PCI: region 3: 0000c04c
Have you attempted to run Tru64 on qemu? I can’t get past the “Hello” screen or the same thing neozeed posted above– was hoping for an open source alternative to this since ES40 got abandoned in favor of $$$ solutions..
the link to the minimal install of debian on alpha is redirecting to a secure webpage (password protected). Even with the login provided on that page I can’t login and cannot download the minimal install. Following the instructions to do it myself fails on all attempts…. 🙁
Seems the file really is missing!
i can’t dowload your minimal install alpha-linux.7z – using the generated login information
Sorry the file has gone missing. I don’t know where it is. I guess the only thing to do is to re-install.. Although you ought to try a newer Qemu and Linux..
got it running following your/firstworks instructions – thx
btw: using -nographic
gives this output
PCI: 00:00:0 class 0300 id 1013:00b8
PCI: region 0: 10000000
PCI: region 1: 12000000
PCI: 00:01:0 class 0200 id 8086:100e
PCI: region 0: 12020000
PCI: region 1: 0000c000
PCI: 00:02:0 class 0101 id 1095:0646
PCI: region 0: 0000c040
PCI: region 1: 0000c048
PCI: region 3: 0000c04c
this option seems to be broken for softmm-alpha
When I used the files to run under qemu, it hung at
[root@ol7 alpha]# ./alp
PCI: 00:00:0 class 0300 id 1013:00b8
PCI: region 0: 10000000
PCI: region 1: 12000000
PCI: 00:01:0 class 0200 id 8086:100e
PCI: region 0: 12020000
PCI: region 1: 0000c000
PCI: 00:02:0 class 0101 id 1095:0646
PCI: region 0: 0000c040
PCI: region 1: 0000c048
PCI: region 3: 0000c04c
Found dennis’ post, removed the -nographic, it works.
With -nographic removed, and installation says “remove the cdrom” to avoid repeat installation, and when the VM is down, I removed “-drive file=debian-5010-alpha-netinst.iso,if=ide,media=cdrom”, and boot it, it still goes into installation menu steps.
You still can find minimal install at
https://web.archive.org/web/20191021110430/https://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/old/install/linux/DecAlpha/alpha-linux.7z
(I am from mobile so can’t test much, but it seems i can get vmlinux/initrd decompressed out of 7z archive)
I download the file, unzip it to get the files to try, but still not able to get the VM working as expected.
I just did the kernel flag and vmlinux image and that booted
But I’m out at the moment
I download the file, unzip it to get the files to try, but still not able to get the VM working as expected.
Here use this one instead:
https://archive.org/details/dec-alpha-debian-5
Thanks a lot for the help!!!
But as I’m using a Linux host to run the qemu, so I copied the following files to my Linux box:
[root@fc31 alp1]# ls -l
total 600572
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 212 Aug 12 17:13 alpha.cmd
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 598933504 Aug 12 17:12 alpha.vmdk
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 9241663 Aug 12 17:12 initrd.img-2.6.26-2-alpha-generic
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 6799304 Aug 12 17:12 vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-alpha-generic
[root@fc31 alp1]#
But when I ran
[root@fc31 alp1]# ./alpha.cmd
qemu-system-alpha: %1: drive with bus=0, unit=0 (index=0) exists
[root@fc31 alp1]#
So not sure why it can’t start the VM
the NT CMD file won’t be 100% on linux espeically with %1 etc.
Also Im sure your Qemu isn’t anything like mine so I’d probably use WINE to run it.
Ok, I found, when I removed those %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9, it started, and once it’s up, I can log in.
Thank you very much!!!
Oh good! what version of Qemu is it?
[root@fc31 alpha]# qemu-system-alpha –version
QEMU emulator version 4.1.1 (qemu-4.1.1-1.fc31)
Copyright (c) 2003-2019 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers
Thanks again for your great work and help.
no problem! and thanks for the follow up, as otherwise people from the future would be wondering!
I tried to install and then used the initrd.img-2.6.26-2-alpha-generic you supplied, it can boot up and I can log in. However, I couldn’t find gcc on the system and also found the version of Linux is the last version debian had supported the Alpha. Can’t find packages for development on the internet. It’s a pity.
It’s the bare minimum installation so yeah no gcc. The disk is probably too small too. There should be some DVD images floating around.
You would need to do a real install
Yes, I used the debian-5010-alpha-netinst.iso to install, it doesn’t provide any choice for you select a development oriented selections to install the OS. And I searched the web, couldn’t find the full list of packages for this version of Linux, only can see some gzipped files with a few meg in size, that does not look like a full distribution. So, still can’t find the GCC package, but the apt-get install gcc-4.3-base said it is installed already, but when check it’s only a empty dir.
https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/5.0.10/alpha/iso-dvd/
Try here
You are so great!!! I tried to find alpha Linux download, but could not found it.
Thanks so much!!!
When I install the Linux from the debian-5010-alpha-DVD-1.iso, it hung at quite a late stage, and I cancel it, then boot from the disk, trying to mount the DVD to see if I can install gcc, but found a strange issue: inside the pool/main/g/gcc-4.3/, I can only see 3 files there while there are many other files there if we check from Windows for the DVD.
My bad, I later found the DVD is the debian-5010-alpha-netinst.iso, not the full DVD. Sorry.