Re: An OS for an Alpha? (was: To: Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER)

From: Hoff Hoffman (hoff_at_hp.nospam)
Date: 09/29/05 

Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:18:01 GMT

In article <tRL_e.91$z26.71@edtnps84>, "GM" <logquality@hotmail.com> writes:
:I dl'd a copy of gentoo linux and made a floppy of some milo stuff. It
:actually flashed and squeaked and sputtered and after 15 minutes I got a...
:#
:
:some kinda command line ***.

  Most UNIX systems will drop you into the Bash, csh, sh, ksh, or
  one of various other command shells. OpenVMS likes to drop you
  into DCL and to the $ prompt; into the OpenVMS "command shell".

:No desktop, no nothin.

  Most operating systems are command line -- it's easier to automate, far
  more flexible, and faster. Unfortunately, a command line interface is
  far more cryptic, particularly if you are largely accustomed to a WIMP
  (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pulldowns) interface. Most every WIMP is
  built onto a command shell, too -- as the system bootstraps, the
  command shell is active, and eventually the WIMP is then launched.

  WIMP can and usually does work best when you are unfamiliar with the
  platform and/or command-line interfaces. WIMP tends to get in the
  way when you are automating tasks, replicating systems, or performing
  other similar tasks.

  (And if most of what you see for information displayed on a Graphical
  User Interface is text, I am not at all certain why we call the the
  display mechanism a GUI. But I digress.)

:I'd luv to install freeBSD but after downloading it ....the genius who says
:*copy these image files to a floppy
:
:well ........HOW... they are .flp images

  dd, probably. There is probably a dd port for whatever system
  you are hosting the download. There's probably a discussion of
  this in the FreeBSD documentation, too.

:The problem with Linux is.... people who build it....don't know just how
:DUMB us wintel morons are.

  Every operationg system has a "cost of entry" in terms of the
  knowledge required to get it going. When you're downloading and
  tossing images around, well, you tend to be on the bleeding edge.

  In the case of Red Hat or Fedora Core Linux, for instance, the
  DVD distro does have a WIMP-like installation environment.

  Getting to the distro is the interesting part.

:No wonder M$ is winning........you Gotta have a freakin degree just to
:install these so called FREE OS's.

  TANSTAAFL. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch", to
  quote from Mr. Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.

  A download-based installation of Microsoft Windows is not
  necessarily fun, either -- and the easiest approach assumes
  you have a BIOS that can boot from USB or CD-ROM, and not
  all BIOS implementations can do that.

:My new Vocabulary of the week:
:
:MILO.......a Canine mascot affiliated with FreeBSD or NetBSD

  MILO and LILO are boot loaders, and work reasonably nicely.
  Windows has an analog, too, that appears when you have two or
  more versions of Windows loaded. The boot loaders can load
  most operating systems, for those systems that support and
  that are configured with multiple operating systems.

  With an Alpha system, the SRM console is the boot loader.
  (That's the cryptic BOOT command, among other commands.)
  With Itanium systems, you'll see EFI used as the boot loader.
  The capabilities of a computer system with "only" a classic
  BIOS implementation -- rather than something like EFI (UEFI)
  or SRM -- can be and often must be supplemented with the
  construct known as a bootloader.

:Floppy Image.....A Photo of a Floppy disk

  Don't forget to save your original floppy on the refrigerator.
  Use a kitchen magnet to hold it there. Sorry. Old joke. :-)

:Boot DKA400 -flags0.........secret code to access my cd-rom

  From SRM, the incantation for a bootstrap from a disk on the fourth
  SCSI unit on the first SCSI bus is, and overriding any default
  flags settings and specifying the primary OpenVMS root and with no
  boot flags specified, is:

>>> boot dka400 -flags 0,0

:Is there any........any..........OS that I can download and burn.........An
:ISO.........and put it in the CD-rom in the Alpha server........and
:.....and........it works.........

  You could order a hobbyist disk kit for OpenVMS for about US$30.
  The distro can be ordered at <http://www.openvmshobbyist.org/>

  I'm not aware of generally-accessable hobbyist media disk images
  for OpenVMS, nor -- given the copyrights and software licensing
  for the product -- would I tend to expect to find open download
  access to same.

  Oh, and in addition to the discussions of the problems reading
  writeable or rewriteable media on older CD-ROM drives, also don't
  assume that a downloaded disk image gets burned correctly -- a
  raw, binary, block-by-block, ISO (a very ambiguous term, BTW) or
  whatever the particular software package calls the necessary data
  transfer operation isn't necessarily as easy as you might thing,
  want, or hope. Failures here tend to be subtle, and something
  that is best tangled with once you have some familiarity with the
  area and the platform -- if your goal is to get an operating system
  booted up and running with a minimum of intervention, acquiring a
  a pre-built distro kit (DVD or CD, depending on requirements) will
  be faster, and will be easier. (As you have certainly found here,
  the download and replication and installation can be the most painful
  part of the whole home-grown installation process.)

  As for a general introduction to the process within OpenVMS itself
  -- the other side of creating an installable and bootable kit for
  optical media -- do see the discussion in the OpenVMS Ask The Wizard
  topic 9820. <http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/wiz_9820.html> The
  initial generation and the mastering for replication does have some
  specific requirements, and there are ways to generate non-bootable
  optical media -- to generate costers, in the common parlance.

        --

  The OpenVMS FAQ has various information and pointers associated with
  OpenVMS, and is available at the URL:

    <http://www.hp.com/go/openvms/faq/>

 ---------------------------- #include <rtfaq.h> -----------------------------
    For additional, please see the OpenVMS FAQ -- www.hp.com/go/openvms/faq
 --------------------------- pure personal opinion ---------------------------
        Hoff (Stephen) Hoffman OpenVMS Engineering hoff[at]hp.com

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