Michael Shuey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I tried Mandrake 7.1 beta for sparc today. Regretably, this just didn't
> work. I tried installing on my Sparc LX (72 MB o'ram, plenty of disk).
> I was unable to use the CD, so I resorted to floppies and network booting.
> I ran into a few problems...
>
> 1) The floppies don't seem to work. Booting the network.img & hd.img disks
> (didn't try cdrom.img) shows an error in silo.conf (line 8). None of
> the images on the floppies were valid because of this error. No booting.
Ok, this has been fixed. This was a typo.
>
> 2) The tftprd.img (network booting) doesn't have a large enough ramdisk.
> It boots (yay!), downloads the second stage ramdisk, but runs out of
> space when decompressing the ramdisk. This can be fixed by doing
> "boot net ramdisk_size=48000" at the PROM's OK prompt. I haven't looked
> into what the minimum requirement is for this to work. 48000 is
> overkill.
32000 should be enough.
>
> 3) The tftprd.img can't use NFS. For some reason it is unable to modprobe
> nfs.o after booting. I have no idea why.
We do not have any problem here, but some module were missing for the previous
build. This may be ok for you too.
>
> After using tftpd.img and specifying a bigger ramdisk things booted & I got
> the installer. This led me to another problem:
>
> 4) The LX's SCSI controller (an ESP) isn't supported. There's no support
> in the kernel and no module available. This is a bit of an issue, since
> it's the only disk controller the thing can have. Building ESP support
> into the kernel, or including it as a module (like pluto or qlogicpti)
> should fix this.
esp is now part of the kernel of the current version.
>
> I just happen to have a few spare sun4m machines lying around, so as I have
> time in the next few days I plan on fixing things, at least for my own use.
> If anyone on the list has experienced similar problems, or is in a position
> to correct these issues and post updates iso or floppy images, help would be
> appreciated. I'd really like to get Mandrake running on these things.
>
Thank a lot for your comments.
François.
