So, I own a Jensen alpha system with installed RedHat 5.2 and decided to upgrade it to RedHat 6.0 Due to broken design Jensen cannot boot from floppy, and also don't support "long" commands in SRM console. But all it's not important for me - cause - I have no RedHat 6.0 CD (so cannot boot from it), and I already have Linux runnig on Jensen, so I just planned to boot with new ramdisk and perfom FTP installation. So, I made new ramdisk from RedHat 6.0 Alpha, then from aboot issued command: 0/a root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 ... The kernel was old stock 2.0.32 - it worked fine with RedHat 5.2 ramdisk - but it coludn't boot new ramdisk. So, I took generic.gz kernel from RedHat 6.0 - place it on my root partition and tried to boot from it with ramdisk - the kernel hang after starting of kswapd... So, I build my own kernel (2.2.7 with all my hardware support, ramdisk and etc - my system work fine with this kernel) - then tried to boot ramdisk with this kernel - after some period of loading ramdisk the system just fall back silently to SRM console. BTW - this kernel boots with ramdisk from RedHat 5.2 just fine. Conclusion - I think that there are some problems at least in ramdisk.img (but in generic.gz too) that prevents to start installation/update of RedHat 6.0 on Jensen Alpha systems...
UPDATE: 1999-05-18 So, this is my (Max.Silakov) comments on this bug - I'm sorry - but actually ramdisk works fine - I didn't know that now ramdisk uses ROMFS not EXT2, so I simply not compiled in support for this feature. BUT !!!!! GENERIC.GZ kernel in RedHat 6.0 distributin NOT WORKING with Jensen Alpha System. I could start installation/update ONLY using my own built of kernel....The bug still exist.
We do not have a Jensen in the test lab. but I am putting this in the list of things to look at in updated boot disks.
If you did have a Jensen donated to you, would you test/develop on it? I may be able to get one for you.