Maybe you can help explain to me why my pre-made kernel won't work, since evidently you're doing some relatively low-level stuff here? ;)
See my earlier thread regarding the kernel being unable to find an MS-DOS partition table (!!!) and freaking out. On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Joshua Kwan wrote: > [ Note: crossposted to both -sparc and -boot, language is less technical > than usually seen on -boot ;) ] > > Hi everyone, > > I'm proud to announce that we now have sparc targets and resultant > images for kernel/root/driver floppies for the new Debian Installer > (sarge). They are not yet being autobuilt by Jeff Bailey (although I > suspect they will get pulled in sometime soon, because he builds from > the latest Subversion) so I have been building them since this evening. > > Everything can be found here: > http://june.voxel.net/~joshk/d-i/images/ > > floppy/root.img is a common root image for both sparc32 and sparc64. It > contains drivers for SBus network devices as well as the usual minimal > Debian Installer environment that is just able to pull down the rest of > its components. > > sparc32/floppy and sparc64/floppy contain boot images (kernel version > 2.4.24) and network driver images. The net-drivers images contain IPv6 > and PPP drivers, but they were mostly space-fillers because the sparc64 > one contains a pile of PCI network device drivers. > > Before you think about installing debian-installer for sparc in general, > consider these caveats: > > * Sparc32: If you only have a Happy Meal SBus ethernet adapter in your > machine, you will need to drop to a shell sometime during the install > and modprobe sunhme. The Discover software that is used to detect > stuff like this does not support SBus. This will either be addressed > in discover or in the Linux 2.4.25 kernel images for sparc, whichever > are done first. The Sparc64 kernels have sunhme built in so this won't > be a problem for you Ultra folks. > > * Floppies: If you need to use the net-drivers floppy for any reason, > you will have to drop to the PROM and call eject-floppy to switch > floppies. This is due to the new eject-udeb still waiting in the NEW > queue that we will later use to eject the root floppy right before > we hit the installer. > > * Serial console: A very elusive bug in our prebaseconfig package, which > sets up an inittab that sets up the serial console you're installing > from for the next boot, doesn't work all the time. Chances are it won't. > You will have to boot the floppy again and mount your root partition > from there and edit /usr/share/sysvinit/inittab to your needs, and save > it to /etc/inittab. A fix for this is top priority and will probably be > figured out tomorrow, but if you can figure it out straightaway, by all > means do, and send a patch ;) > > In other words: right now, unless you like pain, you probably don't > want to try installing if all you have is a serial cable. > > * General: Do not choose 'unstable' as your distribution when installing. > A new package in the base system has updated its dependencies, and > debootstrap needs to be fixed before you can bootstrap unstable. > > Enjoy! Do remember to file installation reports (see > /root/installation-reports.template after the install) detailing how > your install went. > > -- > Joshua Kwan > -- Jessica L. Blank, Systems Administrator, twu.net