2.1_r0 install experience
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
Re: 2.1_r0 install experience
Woohoo, found the right hack (as usually happens *after* I send mail :-) Since I couldn't get it to treat switch disks, I looked more closely at the image naming code (main.c, misc.c)... On the same zip disk that I'd already put resc1440.bin on, I skipped over that to an easy-to-type offset, and dropped root.bin there: +% dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/sda +% dd if=root.bin of=/dev/sda seek=3000 1907+1 records in 1907+1 records out Then booted the zip disk boot: boot sd(0,5,0) Then at the silo prompt: boot: /linux initrd=sd(0,5,0)[3000-5000] root=/dev/ram (the root= may have been redundant...) and it worked! The installer is grinding through the badblocks check even as I type this. Anyway, if someone would like to turn this into English, it looks like we have a relatively easy boot from zip disk path to add to the install instructions... (I'd write it up more clearly myself, but it is 3am. Maybe later.) Whee! _Mark_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Herd of Kittens Debian Package Maintainer
Re: slink CD sparc - testing success
On 8 Mar 1999, Steve Dunham wrote: Jules Bean [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Us sludgy cam-abouts have at last got all the CDs to the right places.. And I have at last tried out some sparc CDs, burnt by matthew I think, and they boot fine on my sparc 2. Did you try the pre1 CDs or the 2.1_r0 CD's that were uploaded yesterday? Whichever where in slink_test on the mirrors at the weekend. (says he who burned them) Matthew -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society Selwyn College Computer Support http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/ http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/ Debian GNU/Hurd - love at first byte
Great job with 2.1, just a few minor questions
Hey, guys. First off, you seem to have done a great job with the Slink install: within two hours, we took a 10-year old Sparc1 from formatting the drives all the way to a base system, X, and ssh (inside of 65MB of disk space, too). With any luck, another 20-something similar machines will follow along. Couple of glitches, though, that might have alrady been addressed: 1) /dev/mouse was not symlinked to /dev/sunmouse when I first tried X. Does some package that everybody else installs take care of that? As I didn't even touch dselect, and used apt to get whatever other packages were needed, I may very well have left out something. 2) /etc/rc.boot/0setserial croaked with Cannot autoconfigure port: Invalid argument -- extremely minor, as those serial ports are not likely to be used for anything. If this is the same init script as in the i386 version, perhaps there should be a differnt one for Sparc? Overwhelmingly, though, Sparc Slink kicks much tail. I hope to have one at home shortly. Thanks again. -- Mike Renfro / Instructor, Basic Engineering Program 931 372-3601 / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: slink CD sparc - testing success
Are there any tests I can do which don't involve nuking my system? Hook up a spare hard drive? What I usually do for testing the installation procedure is borrow my swap partition for the purpose. Of course that means the installation itself has to work without swap. When I did this on a machine with only 8 MB memory a horrific inefficiency in depmod -a was revealed. I sent a patch, but the whole package is being rewritten in C++, apparently, so probably my patch is useless and the next version of modutils will be even more inefficient ... (With my modutils patch it is possible to install i386 Debian with 8 MB memory and no swap, by the way!) Edmund
ssh for sparc-debian
hi, can someone tell me where i can get ssh for debian sparc? Shashi Kanbur [EMAIL PROTECTED] Five College Astronomy Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA (413) 577 0470 (413) 545 4223 (Fax)
newbie with sparc 1+
I am a new user with a sparc 1+ and have 1 floppy drive and 2 hard drives I am currently runnning unix solaris 1 ver 4.1.3 on it now... I want to put linux on it I guess I need to find out more about the whole process and have been reading up all I can on it... I read about the bootfloppies and I have no idea about formating a floppy on the sparc to get the files for sparc... also if I can get the linux install all on floppy would help me alot to and then can use it over my network here... for the routing and the other good stuff linux has to offer... thanks for any help.. Harold
Re: ssh for sparc-debian
ftp.lh.umu.se /pub/linux/debian-non-US --Chris On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hi, can someone tell me where i can get ssh for debian sparc? Shashi Kanbur [EMAIL PROTECTED] Five College Astronomy Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA (413) 577 0470 (413) 545 4223 (Fax) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
netscape
Ok, where do I get netscape for debian-sparc? would that be from netscape and take the linux version? Shashi Kanbur [EMAIL PROTECTED] Five College Astronomy Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 USA (413) 577 0470 (413) 545 4223 (Fax)
Re: 2.1_r0 install experience
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark W. Eichin) writes: So, I went through the install, and an old problem reappeared... When booting off of this disk (sd(0,2,0)), I get Bad magic number in disk label! S Bad magic number in disk label! IProgram terminated. ok I assume this is because (1) the disk was originally formatted on an x86 linux box, so it has a DOS partition table (2) fdisk isn't a big enough hammer to fix that... I did note that fdisk had a b option for edit bsd partition table but all it said was /dev/sdb has no BSD-style partition table... I did find (after rebooting with the rescue zip disk) the eXpert mode g option for create an IRIX partition table which is somewhat distressing... and in fact, that looks like what it *does* do. Very very strange. On the sparc, fdisk has: s create a new empty Sun disklabel which is what you want. (It appears that s is in the intel version too - although it doesn't appear in the menus, and I don't know for sure if all the endian issues are worked out.) Intelsilo is at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~dunham/debian/silo/ as soon as the maintainer folds my changes into the package in potato, I'll generate a potato intelsilo. (May be done already, I'll have to check.) Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: netscape
Try going to ftp.mozilla.org there should be a netscape sparc version there... hmm, also, I thought there was a package avaiable. Unfortunally I can't get to my sparcbox right now to check. --Chris
Re: 2.1_r0 install experience
another minor nit: one of the install docs suggests that one should boot off of the last binary cd in your set - so disk 1/1, 2/2, or 2/4 (in the set that is 2 bin + 2 src.) binary-sparc-2 doesn't appear to be bootable, though - or at least, it has no /boot and no disks-sparc. (As mentioned earlier I can't boot ISO disks on my machine anyway.) Probably the doc should be changed, though there's plenty of room on b-s-2 if we wanted to make it bootable as well...
Re: netscape
Chris Trainor wrote: Try going to ftp.mozilla.org there should be a netscape sparc version there... hmm, also, I thought there was a package avaiable. Unfortunally I can't get to my sparcbox right now to check. --Chris I used ftp.netscape.com, you have to go several levels deep to find a sparc version, it is unsuported BTW and I have found it only runs on the 2.0.35 kernel the 2.1 and 2.2 kernels give me a lot of rumbling and grumbling on the hard drive like it is going to start...then it comes back with bus error Best of luck with your new Sparc install Dan
Re: netscape
You gotta do the mozilla.org site also, in non-free there should be a DebianSparc package. --Chris On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Daniel Urbach wrote: Chris Trainor wrote: Try going to ftp.mozilla.org there should be a netscape sparc version there... hmm, also, I thought there was a package avaiable. Unfortunally I can't get to my sparcbox right now to check. --Chris I used ftp.netscape.com, you have to go several levels deep to find a sparc version, it is unsuported BTW and I have found it only runs on the 2.0.35 kernel the 2.1 and 2.2 kernels give me a lot of rumbling and grumbling on the hard drive like it is going to start...then it comes back with bus error Best of luck with your new Sparc install Dan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 2.1_r0 install experience
Mark Eichin writes: another minor nit: one of the install docs suggests that one should boot off of the last binary cd in your set - so disk 1/1, 2/2, or 2/4 (in the set that is 2 bin + 2 src.) binary-sparc-2 doesn't appear to be bootable, though - or at least, it has no /boot and no disks-sparc. (As mentioned earlier I can't boot ISO disks on my machine anyway.) Probably the doc should be changed, though there's plenty of room on b-s-2 if we wanted to make it bootable as well... Hmmm. If that's correct then it's a bug - the comment should say to run _dselect_ with the last binary CD in the drive, not to boot that way... -- Steve McIntyre, CURS CCE, Cambridge, UK. [EMAIL PROTECTED] a href=http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~stevem/comp/My PC page/a Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky, +-- Tongue-tied twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I... |Finger for PGP key
