I have a vintage SS1+, ROM 1.3. It has been running a crufty Debian install for a while, so 2.1 seemed a good replacement.
Using the 2.1_r0 binary-sparc-1.iso, I discovered that the 1.3 roms can't boot it, at least using the drive I have (which *does* have the right blocksize support that it works, otherwise.) I then discovered that the floppy drive doesn't work ("couldn't read sector 1, self test failed" so it is probably mechanical.) At this point, things start getting complicated; probably moreso than a normal install... certainly more than the would have been if I could find a version of "intelsilo" and just make a bootable zip disk. This led me to discover a few minor holes in the install along the way, though nothing that needs fixing before 2.2... Rather than deal with tftp, I copied the rescue image on to a *zip* disk, dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/sda and tried booting from the scsi zip drive. That worked: boot sd(0,5,0) got me the Debian 2.1 rescue banner and silo prompt. However, now I need to tell it to get the rest off the cdrom. This should work from here, but I didn't get to far with the install.txt: it has what appear to be non-silo instructions... > 6.2. Booting with the Rescue Floppy > You can do two things at the `boot:' prompt. You can press the > function keys _F1_ through _F10_ to view a few pages of helpful In fact, F1..F10 are a loadlin or whatever feature; silo only supports TAB and "help". Searching /install/install.txt for root.bin was kind of vague; nothing ever suggested I actually *put* the file anywhere. % dd if=root.bin of=/dev/sda However, since the rescue is *really* looking for the root on a floppy, I still lose. I've tried a few arguments to the rescue disk: boot: /linux root=/dev/sde load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 # just mounted the rescue zip disk as the root. Suggest # adding a dummy /bin/sh or /sbin/init to the rescue disk to # at least echo why it failed... boot: /linux root=/dev/sde initrd=/dev/sde initrd-prompt # complained about not finding /dev/sde, *then* booted, and # mounted the zip disk as root... boot: linux initrd=!cd5 # got "Loading initial ramdisk...", then booted, then # "RAMDISK: couldn't find ramdisk image starting at 0" # and "insert floppy and press enter". boot: linux show_arguments # said # Kernel args: silo() root=/dev/fd0 rw load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 boot: linux root=/dev/scd0 initrd=!cd5 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 show_arguments # seems to have ignored the show_arguments, and blasted # straight on to booting and mounting the cd as /. # Unfortunately, the CD doesn't have /sbin/init or /bin/sh either... I suspect the problem with the !cd paths is that they'd work if I were really booting off the cd, but from the zip disk, they don't seem to... Any suggestions from here? or do I need to set up a special silo config on the zip disk, to get it to look at the cd? other bits: % cat /mnt/cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-sparc/2.1.8.1-1999-03-01/fdisk.txt ** man page not found ** % ls -l /mnt/cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-sparc/2.1.8.1-1999-03-01/fdisk.txt -r--r--r-- 2 root root 26 Feb 24 22:03 fdisk.txt In silo/second/main.c, the PROM_V0 "You have to type image name..." help message doesn't fit in 80 columns. _Mark_ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Herd of Kittens Debian Package Maintainer