Re: Net boot with tftp
On Tue, Aug 25, 1998 at 12:28:04PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote: > On Mon, 24 Aug 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: > > > any help is apreciated > > > > Pad the file tftpboot.img to a multiple of 4 bytes long (with dd, for > example. Search this mailing list for good approaches. I have a bit of documentation on this at http://rocheworld.dyn.ml.org/debian-sparc/ On another note: does anyone know how to do swap over the net for a diskless workstation? I've got a cute little 386 w/ 8 Megs of RAM that I have netbooting, but it blows up trying to uncompress packages during the install...
Re: Where did all the packages go???
>OK, so it appears that hamm has disappeared from the archive (the sparc >part of it anyway.) > >So I update my apt sources list to look in slink. No problem. But now, I >get a lot of packages listed as obsolete/local. Looking at the archive, >things like dpkg-dev have even disappeared. Where are they??? I noticed this over the weekend and shifted from ftp.debian.org to ftp.us.debian.org (and had to modify the path slightly as well) in dpkg. I think they did a little housecleaning in Georgia. I had no trouble pulling down afterstep last night, so I know that ftp.us.debian.org has binaries. I'm looking into setting up a low- bandwidth message system somewhat like http://slashdot.org aimed at sparc-linux, but I really don't have the badwidth/time at the moment. In the meantime, I've got some pages up on my (rather slow) link at http://rocheworld.dyn.ml.org/debian-sparc. If anyone has any ideas and /or suggestions of things that should really be on those pages, I'm open to suggestions... Also--how does one get the latest working kernal source? I couldn't get the 2.1.107 kernal to compile because of problems with sbus_init not having enough arguments... (how do I get CVS from "vger" or whatever we're talking about) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Xsun -- Where is it?
I can't seem to find (in package or source form) the Xserver for S/Linux...is it out there somewhere? --- Adam Haberlach Really USE your computer! http://www.distributed.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
NEAT!
I noticed that someone on this list had a solution to the "must wait for the netboot to timeout" problem that included padding the size of the tftpboot.img out to a mod-4 size. I did this, just for kicks, and my IPX no longer boots to a scrolling "SCSI ERROR" message. It is in the middle of setup right now, and is about to finish bad-blocking a partition. Looks like I'm in at least some semblence of business. Once again: for people with problems regarding the esp driver, they may possibly be solved by padding the netboot image out a bit. --- Adam Haberlach Really USE your computer! http://www.distributed.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unidentified subject!
>On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: >Why are boot floppies more convenient? What are you planning to use this >thing for? Presumably it'll be on a network. Pretty big presumption. At least in MY case, floppies would have been more convienent, since I didn't have any other machine on my network capable of serving RARP/tftp. Now that I've upgraded one of my other machines, I can actually netboot my Sparc IPX. Of course, there are OTHER problems at the moment... I had planned to use the IPX as my main machine (terminal, minor compiling, etc) and use my old 386 as a diskless router, netbooting off of the Sparc...now I've ended up turning the 386 into a Pentium so I could get onto the net... >Anyhow, if it fails the floppy self-test, you've probably got a buggered >drive. But there *do* seem to be problems with the boot-disks at the >moment. I've had the same problem with floppies with my IPX. The CPU card of my IPX fails self-test (but it aparently has for years, and has run RedHat for quite some time). However, the bootdisks fail shortly after lilo start, with an error on block 50, no matter how many disks I try. The netboot blows up due to an esp driver bug, which can aparently be worked around by compiling esp.o with gcc instead of egcs. Anyone willing to help, and make us a new tftpboot.img? Are there any good sources of sparc-specific debian documentation anywhere? I can hardly find references to sparc hardware on the web pages, other then the fact that Kachina is supposed to be helping out. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: SPARC 2 floppy boot fails
>The other, however, will begin to boot. Specifically, it will load SILO, >and then display the 'boot:' prompt (complaining about my boot-file >variable, which is fair enough). tells me that the image is called >linux (so it can read silo.conf, I guess). So, I boot 'linux', and I get: > >boot: linux > >Read error on block 50 > >Cannot find /linux (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in >short read) > >Image not found... try again I have this exact problem--with the added fact that my SCSI device does not seem to be supported by the current netboot image. I would be willing to help solve these problems if I could get my Sparc IPX working either way. I could try to set up cross-compilation from my i586 system, but I assume that would be more trouble then it is worth... Anyone have any ideas when either of the two problems are going to be fixed? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: SPARC 2 floppy boot fails
>The other, however, will begin to boot. Specifically, it will load SILO, >and then display the 'boot:' prompt (complaining about my boot-file >variable, which is fair enough). tells me that the image is called >linux (so it can read silo.conf, I guess). So, I boot 'linux', and I get: > >boot: linux > >Read error on block 50 > >Cannot find /linux (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in >short read) > >Image not found... try again I have this exact problem--with the added fact that my SCSI device does not seem to be supported by the current netboot image. I would be willing to help solve these problems if I could get my Sparc IPX working either way. I could try to set up cross-compilation from my i586 system, but I assume that would be more trouble then it is worth... Anyone have any ideas when either of the two problems are going to be fixed? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SCSI Problems on IPX
I've managed to get my system to start a netboot from my i586 Linux box. After quite a bit of downloading, the kernel attempts to boot, but once it unpacks the root filesystem, I get scrolling SCSI errors forever. I've heard (from some redhat [boo, hiss] newsgroups) that this is caused by a bug in the SCSI driver that occurs on some systems with kernels compiled with egcs. Anyone out there have this problem, a fix, or a workaround? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Is it me, or are the disks not cool?
I am attempting a floppy installation onto my SparcStation IPX. When I boot off of the rescue disk, it gets past the SILO boot prompt, lets me hit return (I assume that is what I hit), then dies with: Read error on block 50 Cannot find /linux (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) Image not found try again ...and then kicks me back to the SILO boot prompt. I've tried this with different disks created from different drives, and have even taken apart the IPX and blasted a bunch of air through the drive. Anyone else had similar problems? In any case, does anyone know of a set of tools (TFTP/RARP server, etc) which run on Win95 and can be used to get my machine bootstrapped over the net? --- Adam Haberlach http://www.testlab.orst.edu/~haberlaa Really USE your computer! http://www.distributed.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian floppies in DIST/hamm/hamm/disks-sparc on ftp.debian.org
I'm having some problems using the bootdisks to install Linux on my Sparc/IPX. I first attempted to set up the floppy set by using dd on a BeOS system to squirt the files onto the disks. When I attempted to boot the rescue disk, SILO loaded as normal, but when I tried to continue, the kernel could not be found, and it reported a short-read error on block 50. I figured that it was a problem caused by the flaky floppy drivers on BeOS. I downloaded the image files to the Sparc machine (it is currently running a version of RedHad that I really don't like) and attempted to dd them onto the floppies from there, but had the same problem. Is there something I am misusing in dd? I usually use bs=18k to make the copy go faster, but I've tried it with the default blocksize as well. Otherwise I would suspect that the installatio disks (at least the rescue one) on the site are corrupt. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? --- Adam Haberlach http://www.testlab.orst.edu/~haberlaa Really USE your computer! http://www.distributed.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Looking for Media
I am willing and ready to run a beta debian release on my Sparc IPX. All I need to know is where to go to get installation media. I can make floppies (assuming that I can dd an image from BeOS or Linux and have it work on my Sparc), or burn a CD if I need to. On another note--does anyone else have problems with their serial ports? --- Adam Haberlach http://www.testlab.orst.edu/~haberlaa Really USE your computer! http://www.distributed.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi there!
I just joined this list. I've been a debian user for about a year now on various intel systems, but my trusty 386 finally keeled over. I have since purchased a SparcStation IPX from one of my coworkers. It came with RedHat installed, which I have already learned to loathe. I am interested in using/beta-testing Debian on my system, and possibly contributing to compiles and development. I do QA work at Be, Inc., so I'm pretty knowledgable about different systems and have quite a bit of experience. Any ideas where I can pick up a CD-image for a debian/SPARC Cd to reinstall my system? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
