Gentoo on HP 9000 rp 3400

[Fuerri]

I'm trying to install Linux on a HP 9000 rp 3440 box. It has 2 PA-8800 processors, 1000 mHz each.
I'm using Gentoo 2006.0 Universal Boot CD, hppa version.
The problem is that when the installation starts, it suddenly stops seeing the CD-ROM. It tries to mount it first on /dev/sda, then on /dev/sdb, and then gives up and gives me the boot prompt asking to type in the name of the boot device. Nothing I tried (/dev/hda,b,c , /dev/sda,b,c, /dev/ram0, /dev/dsk/c0t0d0, /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0) seems to work.
When i boot into hp-ux system, CD-ROM address there is /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0. It is IDE (the only IDE device on the machine).
Any ideas?

Thanks beforehand,
mARGO

[HPRichard]

If the CD-ROM drive is on the first (and only) IDE channel, then it should be /dev/hda if jumpered master or /dev/hdb if jumpered slave, like on x86 machines.

Another possibility is that it is (whyever) that it is handled as a SCSI device, then it could be /dev/scd (or /dev/scd0 ect.) as well.

I don't know if the IDE driver is compiled built-in or as a module on the boot CD, could be another source of that error.

My last comment concerns the PA-8800 CPUs which are reported to have caching isues when running Linux, as well as the PA-8900 CPUs. They are reported to run much more stable when using a uniprocessor kernel, perhaps your problem is related to that caching issues.

If you have already another Linux distribution installed on that machine (or can boot it up with an InstallCD from that distribution) then you can install Gentoo even that way, all you need is a partitioning tool, filesystem generation tools, tar, chroot and a bash.

[Fuerri]

Thanks for your reply.
The cdrom was not found on either hd* or sd*, that was the problem.
The IDE support is compiled built-in in the kernel on the installation cd, afaik.
I tried installing Debian on that machine before, but it didn't succeed with (apparently) the same error - when loading ide-generic driver for Linux ide support, the machine suddenly rebooted all without any reason.
I now gave up with Linux on this machine and use the original hp-ux for having the webserver (the original meaning for the machine).