I think this used to work in the past when the alpha was generating the image file with alpha-specific code. The image was a fixed size and would have sufficient spare space at the end of the image so that the ustarfs read would encounter the end of the data before it hit the end of the actual image written to the CD. The common code, shared by many other ports, appears to write the last 'floppy' image with just the amount of data to terminate the tar file, but would generate an image size that wasn't necessarily a multiple of 18K. This would probably cause the problem you are seeing.A quick test would be to pad the cdhdtape image to a multiple of 18K, burn that adjusted image, and see if it works:dd if=cdhdtape of=/tmp/cdhdtape bs=18k conv=sync
That was a promising idea Michael. Executing that command produced a file 3778560 bytes in size. I burnt it to CD and tried to boot the PWS but the "block size is not 512 bytes" error occurred and the boot failed the same as usual.
The padded file, at 3778560 bytes, is 2048 bytes bigger than the original. I thought I'd try another way to make an image with the extra space at the end:
% dd if=/dev/zero of=2048b bs=512 count=4 4+0 records in 4+0 records out 2048 bytes transferred in 0.001 secs (2048000 bytes/sec) % ls -l 2048b -rw------- 1 ray wheel 2048 Jun 5 10:18 2048b % cat 2048b >> cdhdtape % ls -l cdhdtape -rw------- 1 ray wheel 3778560 Jun 5 10:19 cdhdtape %but apparently that idea was way off track. When I tried to boot the PWS using it the screen went blank and the machine rebooted as though it had been power-cycled.
I couldn't see how to copy the original cdhdtape to a file with 512 byte blocks and some extra space at the end.
The /tmp/cdhdtape image might work better. If I get a chance to waste another CD and can reboot one of my alphas, I could try this.
Fortunately I've been able to use CD-R/W media to minimize wastage. I've just used a couple of CD-Rs to ensure that wasn't a factor.
[I've already tried a couple of different cdhdtape images, and had some trouble getting the alpha back running properly.]
That's scary. Do you think booting with cdhdtape has affected your alpha somehow?
Ray