[parisc-linux] Trouble accessing BOOT_ADMIN

[Thibaut VARENE]

On 9/1/06, Peter Teunissen <oneman at onemanifest.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>
> I've just obtained a nice B132L+, and want to reinstall debian HPPA
> on it. But I can't access BOOT_ADMIN; I can't see the message saying
> 'To terminate search, press and hold the ESCAPE key'. The screen
> stays black until it boots into the existing linux install and i can
> see the little penguin. I tried holding or tapping the ESC key at
> several stages but I can't stop the boot sequence.

hmm. Unless I'm confused, the penguin only appears on the linux
console. Unless somebody made a rather twisted setup (firmware console
on serial and then forced linux console on VGA), I take it your
monitor is just too slow to display the initial messages. As it's
explained in the howto, watch your keyboard for led blinks and press
tab when that happens. This will break the autoboot sequence and if
you hit "tab" more, the resolution will be switched.

with a recent kernel you can change the console using the pdc_stable
driver in /sys/firmware/stable/paths/, see
http://wiki.parisc-linux.org/PdcStableStorage

HTH

T-Bone

-- 
Thibaut VARENE
http://www.parisc-linux.org/~varenet/