Handbook:HPPA/Blocks/Booting

Booting the installation CD
Boot the HPPA system. During the boot process, a message similar to the following will show up:

When this message appears, press and hold the key until an option menu appears. This can take a while, be patient. By default, this should enter the BOOT_ADMIN console. If an option menu is displayed, choose Enter Boot Administration mode to enter the BOOT_ADMIN console. This should result in an '>' prompt.

Put the Gentoo installation CD in the CD-ROM. If the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive is unknown, then the PA-RISC station will search for it if the  command is invoked.

The PA-RISC station will now display all the available boot media. This is an example result of this command:

To boot from a CD-ROM the accompanying Device Path is needed. For instance, to boot from the TOSHIBA CD-ROM in the above example, type the following command:

The ipl keyword (Initial Program Loader) tells palo (the PA-RISC boot LOader) to enter interactive mode. This will allow to change, for example, the kernel boot parameters.

When the boot is successful, palo will start in interactive mode:

These parameters are suitable for most situations.

If extra features are needed, add the appropriate keyword(s) to the end of the command line. To add a keyword, edit the last field, add a space and type your keyword. The only implemented keywords as of now are cdcache which tells the installation CD to load itself into RAM, allowing to unmount the CD, and noload=module1[,module2[,...]] which allows to explicitly disable loading of particular modules.

Now that the kernel boot params are set, boot it.

This should result in a root ("#") prompt on the current console. It is possible to switch to other consoles by pressing +, +, and +. Get back to the first one, press +.