Hello, On Fri, 2025-09-19 at 13:10 +0200, Riccardo Mottola wrote: > "strong" of my new setup I went bold testing and also exploited one more > time the Sun Fire which was "install donor" for this installation before > putting back its solaris disks and back in original state.
OK. > I see this on the V120 > [ 2.200440] rtc-m48t59 rtc-m48t59.0: hctosys: unable to read the > hardware clock No idea, needs to be investigated. > then the serial console looks a bit garbage, seems terminal types don't > work well after apt updates! yet it is standard vt102 or ANSI through > minicom as I always used :( > I am able to luckily login via ssh. So machine is "alive". Just for > double-check I rebooted the 6.16 kernel and it still spits out crap. I > think it is color codes that corrupt something. > > Sun Fire V120 (1x UltraSparc IIe ) > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > debian-sparc64 6.16.7+deb14-sparc64 #1 Debian 6.16.7-1 (2025-09-11) > sparc64 GNU/Linux : boots fine This is an unpatched kernel, so not really relevant. > debian-sparc64 6.17.0-rc5+ #1 SMP Fri Sep 12 20:37:32 UTC 2025 sparc64 > GNU/Linux : boots fine This is the patched kernel, this needs to be tested. > After several boots and restarts, eventually I got a crash on a "warm > restart"... > > > on Ultra 2: > GRUB Loading kernel.... and hangs there. Nothing to do with the kernel. > I tried a set-defaults since the nvram chip is flakey until i fix it or > a replacement comes, but nothing. > Coherent with CDROM boot? > > hangs here.... > > > on Ultra 1: > GRUB Loading kernel.... and hangs there. > This one has a good nvram chip. So it appears that the old Ultras don't > like GRUB? nor from CD nor from the installed system The kernel image could be too big. Try stripping it with "strip vmlinux-6.17.0-rc5+" before rebooting. > Could the GRUB version be "tailored" to the Fire 120 and not work on > previous systems? No. GRUB has simply never been really tested on these old machines, I think. > As a 100% re-check I put in the solaris hard disk and it boots.. until > it fails to fsck extra partition... I lost a disk. Still enough to prove > the system is functional! > > So... not a shiny future right now for Linux on the old Ultras You could try setting up SILO on these machines. Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer `. `' Physicist `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
