RE: Sparcy gets a brother
Well. The IPC has this great little slit on the front of it which some people like to stick disks in. I have found, you can attatch a Vacume Cleaner Hose to it, and it goes great sucking the crap off my floor. The bottumn line is, the IPC is sealed up so well, it's main intake is the damn floppy drive. All sorts of dust and crap gets in and shits everything. I had trouble with boot disks, and flagged it streight away, and found TFTP from my Slak 3.3 box was easy. The insructions DONT mention the ARP step only the RARP step, Both must be done, otherwise it wont boot. If you follow the instructions to the letter, other than that, it works VERY well. >From there, I tried to make a floppy, and boot from it, just to test the drive. Sure enuf, the drive is stuffed. This is the case on 3 out of 4 SparcIPC's I have. So... my advise is... get some compressed Oxygen Free Nitrogen, and blast the sucker, then run a cleaning disk thru it. On all three of the faulty systems, the drives are now all working perfectly. I highly recommend obtaining a tranceiver and some 10Base2 or 10BaseT cable, and Net Booting. These systems are designed for it... and are reliable. It's simple... you you can't TFTP to a SunIPC, you are doing it wrong, or it's hardware failure. 98% of the time it's user error. RTFM Everyone, and it will all work out. My systems are Proof of that. If anyone out there is having problems NetBooting or setting up a SunIPC feel free to E-Mail me or catch me on the IRC ( irc.debian.org #debian ) -Original Message- From: Stephen J. Carpenter [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 1998 2:57 AM To: debian-sparc@lists.debian.org Subject:Sparcy gets a brother ok... At he MIT Flea Market I puyrchased another Sun Station this month. I got me an IPC this time. It seems faster but... I still can't get Linux on it :( I came in to see a guy I know with some SUN stations at work yesterday, nd we made up boot floppies... My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. I am going to try the tftpboot.img when I can...but boot floppies would be much more convinent. I am wondering if maybe I need new floppy drives? I try on my sparc 1 boot fd() (BTW its ROM version is like 1.0) that gives me an error...in fact test-floppy also fails but eject works fine sigh...im going to try some more things when I get a chance...im just sorta wondering if the boot floppy imigas are screwed? -Steve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> */ E-mail "Bumper Stickers": "A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!" "honk if you Love Linux" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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: Sparcy gets a brother
On Mon, Jul 20, 1998 at 05:15:14PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Stephen J. Carpenter writes: > > My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) > > I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and > > type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) > > I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about > > a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. > > I have been able to boot my Sun IPC from the boot floppies of debian. > Jute type boot floppy at the ok prompt, with the disk resc1440.bin on > the drive. After the floppy is loaded, it is ejected and I am asked to > put in the root disk (root.bin). Then it brings up the instllation > menu from which I can install debian from a NFS mounted partition (of > another NFS server) ahh cool...wish it worked for me > > I am wondering if maybe I need new floppy drives? I try on my sparc 1 > > boot fd() (BTW its ROM version is like 1.0) > > that gives me an error...in fact test-floppy also fails but eject works > fine > > > > sigh...im going to try some more things when I get a chance...im > > just sorta wondering if the boot floppy imigas are screwed? > > How do you create the floppies. I just ftp the files resc1440.bin and > root.bin to a PC running DOS (note: some site gzip the file so you > have to gunzip them) then I write them to floppies with the rawrite > program. You can't use dd on a Sun (Solaris) machine because of the > volume mamager daemon. first I got onto a SUN system and issued fdformat -U floppy Then...I took the floppy and placed it in an i386 linux machine. I then typed dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/fd0 I also tried cp resc1440.bin /dev/fd0 (always worked for me in the past) both had the same result -STeve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> */ E-mail "Bumper Stickers": "A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!" "honk if you Love Linux" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sparcy gets a brother
On Mon, Jul 20, 1998 at 04:50:43PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote: > On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: > > > ok... > > At he MIT Flea Market I puyrchased another Sun Station this month. > > I got me an IPC this time. It seems faster but... > > I still can't get Linux on it :( > > I came in to see a guy I know with some SUN stations at work > > yesterday, nd we made up boot floppies... > > My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) > > I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and > > type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) > > I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about > > a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. > > I am going to try the tftpboot.img when I can...but boot floppies would > > be much more convinent. > > Why are boot floppies more convenient? What are you planning to use this > thing for? Presumably it'll be on a network. Well it WILL eventually be on my network... the problem is right now it is not a machine I iwll use often because well... I have no room for it :( There is no desk space left on my desk...and many of the people I live with are um well...oposed to many other places I would like to put some computers (would you believe the first thing they told me was "No computers in the bathroom, or the kitchen") sheeshwhat great ideas they gave me :) > 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. great :) -Steve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> */ E-mail "Bumper Stickers": "A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!" "honk if you Love Linux" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sparcy gets a brother
On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: > ok... > At he MIT Flea Market I puyrchased another Sun Station this month. > I got me an IPC this time. It seems faster but... > I still can't get Linux on it :( > I came in to see a guy I know with some SUN stations at work > yesterday, nd we made up boot floppies... > My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) > I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and > type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) > I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about > a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. > I am going to try the tftpboot.img when I can...but boot floppies would > be much more convinent. Why are boot floppies more convenient? What are you planning to use this thing for? Presumably it'll be on a network. 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. Jules /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sparcy gets a brother
Stephen J. Carpenter writes: > My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) > I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and > type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) > I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about > a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. I have been able to boot my Sun IPC from the boot floppies of debian. Jute type boot floppy at the ok prompt, with the disk resc1440.bin on the drive. After the floppy is loaded, it is ejected and I am asked to put in the root disk (root.bin). Then it brings up the instllation menu from which I can install debian from a NFS mounted partition (of another NFS server) > I am wondering if maybe I need new floppy drives? I try on my sparc 1 > boot fd() (BTW its ROM version is like 1.0) > that gives me an error...in fact test-floppy also fails but eject works fine > > sigh...im going to try some more things when I get a chance...im > just sorta wondering if the boot floppy imigas are screwed? How do you create the floppies. I just ftp the files resc1440.bin and root.bin to a PC running DOS (note: some site gzip the file so you have to gunzip them) then I write them to floppies with the rawrite program. You can't use dd on a Sun (Solaris) machine because of the volume mamager daemon. --- PHAM Dinh Tuan | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Laboratoire de Modelisation et Calcul | Tel: +33 4 76 51 44 23 BP 53, 38041 Grenoble cedex (France) | Fax: +33 4 76 63 12 63 --- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sparcy gets a brother
ok... At he MIT Flea Market I puyrchased another Sun Station this month. I got me an IPC this time. It seems faster but... I still can't get Linux on it :( I came in to see a guy I know with some SUN stations at work yesterday, nd we made up boot floppies... My machines refuse to boot (both my IPC and the Sparc 1) I put my hard drive in HIS sparc 1 (same model as mine) and type boot floppy...(both my machines refuse to do this) I see a SILO prompt but...it wont boot. It complains about a missing lilo.conf and not being able to read block 6. I am going to try the tftpboot.img when I can...but boot floppies would be much more convinent. I am wondering if maybe I need new floppy drives? I try on my sparc 1 boot fd() (BTW its ROM version is like 1.0) that gives me an error...in fact test-floppy also fails but eject works fine sigh...im going to try some more things when I get a chance...im just sorta wondering if the boot floppy imigas are screwed? -Steve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> */ E-mail "Bumper Stickers": "A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both!" "honk if you Love Linux" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tftpboot.img
On Mon, 20 Jul 1998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I tcpdump'ed the period while it is waiting, and the SPARC is doing lots > > of ACK commands, clearly waiting for something. Believing that redhat's > > tftp was broken, I first updated it, and secondly copied across my debian > > one, but these didn't fix it. > > > > Eventually, on a whim, I noticed that the tftpboot.img is a odd-number of > > bytes long. I used dd to pad it with zeros to the nearest 4-byte > > boundary, and tried again. It works! So this appears to be some > > alignment issue with the SPARC's tftp code. > > Can you explain more what you are doing. I may try it too. There is probably a neater way, but I did dd bs=2516356 if=tftpboot.img of=tftpboot.img.new conv=sync > > > Could this same thing be the problem with the floppies? Are SS2's more > > fussy about alignment? > > I have been able to boot into linux with the debian floppies on the > sparc IPC. But I got into another problem: the keybord is repeating > too fast (actually the delay before repeating is so short). This is > vary annoying because it is quite hard to enter a passwd correctly to > login. Furthermore the same problem occure under X and xset does not > seem to have any effect on the keyboard repeat. I have tried to issue > "xset r off" to turn of keyboard repeating but to no avail. I have > post the problem to this news group but never get a solution. For this > reason, I would like very much to install the redhat sparc linux to > see if it works better. It's *very* quiet in here at the moment... I guess the debian-sparc guys are busy at the moment. So, if you're listening, I'm happy to help out... :-) Jules /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
tftpboot.img
Jules Bean writes: > Hi there again... > > Still no luck with my floppy drive. However, I yesterday installed my > transceivers, and started net-booting. > > All went well initially (I'm booting off redhat, I'm afraid - it's my > friend's machine) until the stage where it downloads the tftpboot.img. > I had deduced (by using tcpdump ;) that a sparc-2 is a sun4c, and was able > to name the file correctly. It would show progress on the console up to > the end (26a400, IIRC) and then hang. After a long time (5-10 min) it > would eventually say 'receive timedout' or something, and boot into Linux > (yay! The penguin!). However, it would then give hundreds of I/O errors > when trying to mount the RAM disk. Well, I had a similar problem with my older Sun IPC and LX. I have tried both the net booting and the tape booting (as explained in the README on the redhat site). I got exactly the same behaviour as you describe. At first I thought it comes from my tftp server (it ia another SUN and strage enough, I find no command rarp so I just ignore the step relate to this). Therefore I have tried booting by tape. > I tcpdump'ed the period while it is waiting, and the SPARC is doing lots > of ACK commands, clearly waiting for something. Believing that redhat's > tftp was broken, I first updated it, and secondly copied across my debian > one, but these didn't fix it. > > Eventually, on a whim, I noticed that the tftpboot.img is a odd-number of > bytes long. I used dd to pad it with zeros to the nearest 4-byte > boundary, and tried again. It works! So this appears to be some > alignment issue with the SPARC's tftp code. Can you explain more what you are doing. I may try it too. > Could this same thing be the problem with the floppies? Are SS2's more > fussy about alignment? I have been able to boot into linux with the debian floppies on the sparc IPC. But I got into another problem: the keybord is repeating too fast (actually the delay before repeating is so short). This is vary annoying because it is quite hard to enter a passwd correctly to login. Furthermore the same problem occure under X and xset does not seem to have any effect on the keyboard repeat. I have tried to issue "xset r off" to turn of keyboard repeating but to no avail. I have post the problem to this news group but never get a solution. For this reason, I would like very much to install the redhat sparc linux to see if it works better. --- PHAM Dinh Tuan | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Laboratoire de Modelisation et Calcul | Tel: +33 4 76 51 44 23 BP 53, 38041 Grenoble cedex (France) | Fax: +33 4 76 63 12 63 --- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Package: xv
At least I think it's a new package, it's not on ftp.debian.org, anyway. I have it at home.broudy.net:/pub/debian/ if anyone wants to test it out. Is it appropreate to announce that to this list? How do I go about submiting it to ftp.debian.org for the world to enjoy? Dave Broudy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Compiling Packages
On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Jules Bean wrote: > I, too, will be compiling some packages - notably, menu, libungif, > possibly E.. I tried menu, and am stuck on some STL stuff that probably comes from a problem in libc or libstdc++. Actually, I have the same problem on x86, so I wonder how it got compiled for that architecture? Dave Broudy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ldd probs
Hmm... ldd seems to be badly broken on sparc - and this impacts dpkg-shlibdeps, which makes package building hard. I presume this is a known problem. What is its status? I couldn't see anything in the BTS, but maybe I'm not looking the the right place.. Jules /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Compiling Packages
On Sun, 19 Jul 1998, Dave Broudy wrote: > On Sun, 19 Jul 1998, Jules Bean wrote: > > > 1) Download the .orig.tar.gz, .diff.gz and .dsc file for the package from > > any mirror in dists//source > > > > 2) Put all three in the same dir. Type 'dpkg-source -x .dsc' > > > > 3) Cd into the newly created source dir. Run 'debian/rules build' (if > > possible, as root, otherwise, read the docs on how to use fakeroot). > > Sounds easy enough. Is there a centralized list of packages that are > higher priority, or are already done, or ones where the effort is > substantial and are in progress? I, too, will be compiling some packages - notably, menu, libungif, possibly E.. Is there a system for submitting them? Or has someone else got it covered? I know there are some auto-compiling tools out there.. Jules [EMAIL PROTECTED] /+---+-\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd| | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED]| TW9 2TF *UK* | ++---+-+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \--/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bootable CDROM
Hello, I tried to make a bootable CDROM for a Sparc, but it failed two times. I followed the instructions in the SILO-Documentation. I booed the CD, silo came up, I pressed Return and it says loading image, later loading initial Ramdisk. But then it tells me "Data access exeption" without even booting the Kernel. It does this from CD and also from the Harddisk, when I boot with an initrd. Does anybody know, what is wrong here? I used root.bin as initrd, is this correct? BTW, the same worked on an intel machine but it doesn't work on the SparcStation 2. Thanks for any help. Alexander -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
