Red Hat Linux 7.2: The Official Red Hat Linux Alpha Installation Guide
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# Appendix B. MILO

This chapter provides information that might be useful for those who want to install Red Hat Linux on an Alpha which boots using MILO, the Alpha Miniloader, instead of the SRM console.

| MILO Is Not Officially Supported by COMPAQ.
| COMPAQ does not provide official support for the MILO miniloader. If you use MILO to boot your Alpha and run into problems, you may report them to COMPAQ via our online bugzilla site for 7.2.

You may need more information to help you with MILO. The original Alpha Miniloader HOWTO, which contains in-depth, but out-of-date, information about the MILO miniloader, is available from ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/, in the file `pub/Digital/Linux-Alpha/Miniloader/docs/HOWTO/milo.howto.html`.

More accurate information for the recent MILOs, is available from the Linux Documentation Project collection of HOWTOs at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/MILO-HOWTO/index.html .

The most recent MILO images, based on 2.2 kernel sources, are available from http://www.suse.de/~stepan/.

Some older MILO images, based on 2.0 kernel sources, are available from ftp://genie.ucd.ie/pub/alpha/milo/.

| Please Note
| Many people will find the previous information to be very useful. However, this information is provided by sources outside of COMPAQ. and it contains descriptions of procedures that are not supported by COMPAQ.

# MILO Installation Overview

| Please Note
| It is very important to be using a recent MILO based on the 2.2 kernel sources, if one wishes to install using only the CD-ROM and not diskettes. This technique requires that an initial RAMdisk (initrd) be read from the CD-ROM. In addition, a recent MILO will enable booting a kernel from a large partition, which often gives older MILOs trouble. The installation will not ensure that kernels are placed in partitions which older MILOs can access.

Installing Red Hat Linux on an Alpha system using MILO is slightly more complex than installing Red Hat Linux on an Intel machine. In general, the sequence of steps to a successful installation are:

1. If you have not already installed a version of MILO to a hard disk partition, create a MILO boot image diskette. See the following section for more information about which MILO boot image to choose for your hardware.

2. Boot into MILO, either from the diskette or hard disk.

3. Load the Red Hat Linux Alpha 7.2 kernel and initial RAMdisk (initrd) from the CD-ROM. The Red Hat Linux installation program then starts.

4. After the installation completes, install the miniloader on a small partition on your machine.

More detail on each of the above steps is contained in the following sections.

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Upgrade Complete |  | MILO and Alpha Hardware