booting a 9000/785/C8000

I'm new to parisc (hppa) machines - never touched one before. I'm trying to boot into linux so that i can do a simple
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/[hard drive]
I have about 25-30 machines to work on, so I'm looking for a rather clean solution :-)

I've tried both Gentoo's and Debian's hppa offerings, but am having the same problems on both (i've used gentoo x86/amd64 for years...):
1 - I can boot with 'console=tty0 sti=0/4/0/0' (as added by palo) and the boot process will stop with

	Console: colour dummy device 160x64

at this point, it is not hard locked - I can ctrl-alt-del to reboot. it would probably sit there indefinitely - I did leave it for about 16-18 hours (running when I left work, still there the next day).
2 - I can boot without the 'console=tty0' and the kernel will load, but then fail when it can't find initial console (panic: kernel not syncing).

I've tried with both the AGP 8x Fire GL X1 that comes in the machine, and a PCI Rage XL of some sort.

The Gentoo kernel is 2.6.20 (most recent livecd, 2007.0), and debian's is also recent cd with 2.6.18 kernel.
In both cases, the complete kernel command line were pretty much the same (maybe they varied in looptype? ...and order of arguments)

TERM=linux root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc cdroot looptype=normal loop=/image.loop hda=scsi hdb=scsi console=tty0 sti=/0/4/0/0 sti_font=VGA8x16 palo_kernel=0/vmlinux

while it is doing whatever it does prior to when it can be stopped to specify a boot path (analogous to x86 post?) it does say something along the lines of:

	console device			graph3
						0/4/0/0.0
	current console device	graph3
						0/04/0/0.256

So, upon seeing that tried to set the sti= kernel arg to those values, but found the same results.

anybody, anything?

Quoted 43 lines · you

Quoted 37 lines · Rick Vernam

I'm new to parisc (hppa) machines - never touched one before. I'm trying to boot into linux so that i can do a simple
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/[hard drive]
I have about 25-30 machines to work on, so I'm looking for a rather clean solution :-)

I've tried both Gentoo's and Debian's hppa offerings, but am having the same problems on both (i've used gentoo x86/amd64 for years...):
1 - I can boot with 'console=tty0 sti=0/4/0/0' (as added by palo) and the boot process will stop with

	Console: colour dummy device 160x64

at this point, it is not hard locked - I can ctrl-alt-del to reboot. it would probably sit there indefinitely - I did leave it for about 16-18 hours (running when I left work, still there the next day).
2 - I can boot without the 'console=tty0' and the kernel will load, but then fail when it can't find initial console (panic: kernel not syncing).

I've tried with both the AGP 8x Fire GL X1 that comes in the machine, and a PCI Rage XL of some sort.

The Gentoo kernel is 2.6.20 (most recent livecd, 2007.0), and debian's is also recent cd with 2.6.18 kernel.
In both cases, the complete kernel command line were pretty much the same (maybe they varied in looptype? ...and order of arguments)

TERM=linux root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc cdroot looptype=normal loop=/image.loop hda=scsi hdb=scsi console=tty0 sti=/0/4/0/0 sti_font=VGA8x16 palo_kernel=0/vmlinux

while it is doing whatever it does prior to when it can be stopped to specify a boot path (analogous to x86 post?) it does say something along the lines of:

	console device			graph3
						0/4/0/0.0
	current console device	graph3
						0/04/0/0.256

Quoted 4 lines

So, upon seeing that tried to set the sti= kernel arg to those values, but found the same results.

anybody, anything?

Quoted 8 lines

Yes.
Probably the reason is, that you are using unsupported graphic cards. Both, the Fire GL and the Rage XL are not supported, although maybe the Rage XL could be made working (if a developer will/can try). Please see
http://parisc-linux.org/faq/index.html#fxgfx and
http://parisc-linux.org/faq/graphics-howto.html

Helge

Well, The Fire GL X1 is the original card for the machine...and it boots HP-UX just fine...
I'm not looking even for framebuffer...nor will I be using X.
I'd be happy with a non-framebuffered boot.
Anything to get me to a shell. (the machines have come in off-lease, and I don't have root passwd for the existing HP-UX install).

Can I pass some kind of nofb kernel command line or something?