Steve Dunham wrote: > Christopher Reid Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > If all else fails you could try booting from the network and then use the > > > CD. > > > But it would still need to load the RAM disk image from the CD-ROM, and > > that's what fails. Ultimately, this will be a net-booting machine that > > gets its / filesystem via NFS from my Linux/x86 system, but I need a way > > to get the distribution off the CD. > > No, the network boot image contains both a kernel and the initial > ramdisk. The i386 box would provided the address to the sparc via > RARP and the tftpboot image via tftp. > > > Since the initial plan (boot from CD and install to an external HDD, > > serve the external HDD from the x86) seems doomed, I wonder if I can > > just extract the files I need by hand from the x86 to another disk on > > the x86? Has anyone done this before? The readmes on the CD didn't have > > anything to say about this. > > You could do this, but you have to make a sun disklabel on the disk > (instead of a DOS partition table) with the hidden "s" command in > fdisk, and you would need to use "intelsilo" to install the bootloader > on the hard drive. (The intelsilo package isn't in the Debian > distribution yet, and I've never tested it on a hard drive.)
As far as I can tell, intelsilo was only design to build bootable CDROM from a PC box. The last time I checked sources (0.8.5 ?), there was no harddisk support. Therefore the only way to fully install Debian/sparc on a harddisk is from a sparc. As Steve told you, you can boot your sparc of the net then, at the time the installation process is requiring to partition your harddisk, spawn a shell (or switch to tty2) then run "fdisk -s" to partition your harddisk. Then complete the installation as usual. The step "make your hard disk bootable" writes a bootable sector on your disk using silo, the sparc boot loader. Regards. -- Eric Delaunay | "La guerre justifie l'existence des militaires. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | En les supprimant." Henri Jeanson (1900-1970)