Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports 2019-11-22

Just recording this simpleton's experience.

I booted the 22 Nov image. AlphaServer1200

It boots fine, but asks for qlogic 1040.bin firmware on removable media.

The system has a PCI card that controls an IDE HDD and an IDE CDRW,
plus a SCSI CDROM (that I boot off) plus a floppy drive plus a PCI USB
card and a few SCSI HDD.

the boot messages show the USB -- including identifying the device, eg
SanDisk CRUZ. But when I try to load the firmware from removable media
(USB, floppy, CD), there is no evidence of any removable media even
being accessed/polled.

No CD lights come on, no floppy light comes on, no USB stick LEDs come on.

It does initialise the network (DEC tulip).

I tried putting s CD with firmware into the SCSI CDROM drive and
mounting it manually on /cdrom, but the installer still does not see
it, though I can look at it in the shell.

I am thinking I am going to have to make my own installer, since
apparently the DFSG prevent the requisite firmware going on the disk.

I'm not a complete newbie, but I am not a developer or sysadmin. I've
read around a bit, but a pointer to the most useful guide to adding
stuff to the iso and burning my own version would be helpful. I assume
I have to mount the iso, unpack the initramfs image and add stuff in
there, but it's a bit daunting. I'm not asking anyone to do it for me,
but an pointer to a good tutorial or how-to would help. I've found
some stuff on the Debian pages and elsewhere, but no luck so far.

Cheerio

Darren