Installing on the Alpha requires the use of a ramdisk image. Boot disk and ramdisk images can both be found in /images on your Red Hat CD. To begin the install, boot to the MILO prompt and insert your boot disk in your first floppy drive. Then give this command to MILO:
boot fd0:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1
MILO should now read the Linux kernel from your boot disk and run it. The kernel will load a basic system from the remainder of the floppy and run the installation. If you are using the SRM console, the
command must be given to the kernel as arguments for the install to begin properly. Red Hat Linux Alpha supports two varieties of hard drive partitioning. The first is standard PC style partitioning. This has the usual oddities (such as extended partitions) and is done in the same way as on Intel platforms using fdisk. Unfortunately, cfdisk is not yet available on Alphas. This is the partitioning style that must be used if the ARC console is being used.load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1
BSD style disk labeling is also supported. It is normal to make the fist partition on a disk labeled hard drive the swap partition. We don't recommend using BSD labeling unless it is absolutely necessary.