PA-RISC/Linux Boot HOWTO

Deb Richardson

The Puffin Group

deb@thepuffingroup.com

Thomas Marteau

ESIEE

marteaut@esiee.fr

Revision History
Revision 0.8October 17, 2001Revised by: tm
This version takes care of the change of name of the official FTP and CVS sites and modify the license.
Revision 0.7October 13, 2001Revised by: tm
This version adds some updates due to the progress of PA/Linux.
Revision 0.6 draftSeptember 26, 2001Revised by: tm
This version has some minor changes and complete the "obtaining bootp/tftpd" section.
Revision 0.5 draftAugust 3, 2001Revised by: tm
This version is a great update from Debbie's work
Revision 0.3 draftNovember 24, 1999Revised by: dlr
The initial and published version of this HOWTO.

This document outlines the procedures for getting the current PA-RISC/Linux development kernel to boot on your PA-RISC system. It also explains the functions of PALO, the kernel loader for PA/Linux. Please notice that this HOWTO is a newer version than Deb Richardson's and includes more accurate informations due to the progress of the port. Nevertheless, I must say that this version keeps some texts of the oldest one and I reveal some hidden works of Deb.

This HOWTO does not currently include the information needed for creating your PA-RISC/Linux kernel for each type of system. This part will be added as soon as the official team will say so. For more information about the PA-RISC/Linux porting project, please see http://www.parisc-linux.org/.


Table of Contents
1. Copyright and Licensing
2. Supported Hardware
3. Preparing to boot
3.1. Consoles
3.2. Preparing to boot from the network
4. Booting your PA-RISC/Linux system via PALO, the kernel loader
4.1. What is PALO?
4.2. What does PALO?
4.3. How to make a lifimage with RAMDISK ?
4.4. How to make a lifimage with NFSROOT ?
4.5. How to make bootable a partition ?
4.6. How to use PALO at the boot ?
5. What you need to know about BOOT_ADMIN
5.1. The main commands
5.2. The configuration commands
5.3. The information commands
5.4. The service commands
6. HOWTO contributors