PROM version 4.6.5 bad for Sun Blades? (was: Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media)

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:
Thus USB, IDE, and serial dbootstrap all seems to be broken for me, (and 
the machine still runs Solaris without any problems).



Very puzzling to me. My Blade (including IDE and USB) is booting just
fine. I installed from the exact same images. I use this machine as my
primary desktop and I've yet to see one bit of trouble from it.

I'm baffled, to say the least.



Hello,

As Alvaro Figueroa found out, the problems I had seems to be due to the 
OpenPROM version 4.6.5. When I backed the version to 4.5.9 (also from 
the 79-05 patch) all problems magically disappeared, and the machine 
is running woody fine now.


Thanks a lot,
Arne

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Re: Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 03:01:01PM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:


Ben Collins wrote:

I hooked up a serial terminal instead. The kernel booted, but after the 
root file system was mounted there were no more messages, so I guess the 
installation program output is going somewhere else.



If you connect a serial cable, you must disconnect the keyboard.



which I did (or used console=ttya), but the point was that I got all 
the kernel messages on the serial terminal up to the point where the 
root filesystem was mounted, but I did not see anything from dbootstrap.



When you say "or used console=ttya", do you mean you physically
disconnected the keyboard? That's very very important. And yes, it will
make a difference between the kernel showing to serial and the
dbootstrap not.

I just did a serial cosnsole install two days ago using my tftp image,
on an ultrasparc 30, with no problems. So it isn't a bug in the
dbootstrap program.



Yes, no keyboard attached on the Blade. Are there any parameters that 
controls how dbootstrap talks to the console?


I also just tried serial console installation on an Ultra10 (with 
keyboard disconnected) from the same netinst CD, and that worked as 
expected.


Anyway, since the IDE controller driver is not working either, I would 
not get much futher even if I could interact with dbootstrap.


Thus USB, IDE, and serial dbootstrap all seems to be broken for me, (and 
the machine still runs Solaris without any problems).


Thanks,
Arne

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Re: Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:
I hooked up a serial terminal instead. The kernel booted, but after the 
root file system was mounted there were no more messages, so I guess the 
installation program output is going somewhere else.



If you connect a serial cable, you must disconnect the keyboard.



 which I did (or used console=ttya), but the point was that I got all 
the kernel messages on the serial terminal up to the point where the 
root filesystem was mounted, but I did not see anything from dbootstrap.


Arne

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Re: Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:

On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 05:51:34PM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:


Ben Collins wrote:


On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 04:35:13PM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:



Hello,

I have no luck booting a Sun Blade 100 with 512M memory and PROM version 
4.6 from the Debian install media. I have tried the Official Woody CD, 
and BenC's latest netinst.iso and tftpboot.img. After the message



What sort of graphics card is installed?



I don't have the machine at hand right now, but there is a PCI graphics 
card installed, and the PROM displayed something like "Elite 3D/Lite" if 
I remember correctly. Maybe I should remove that card and try to use the 
on board graphics instead?



Please do, thanks.



Still getting just about nowhere.

I removed the Expert3D-lite graphics card. The linux kernel now booted. 
However, the USB keyboard did not accept the address the kernel tries to 
give it, so no keyboard and I could not communicate with the 
installation program.


I hooked up a serial terminal instead. The kernel booted, but after the 
root file system was mounted there were no more messages, so I guess the 
installation program output is going somewhere else.


I swapped the disk with one from an Ultra 10 that is already installed, 
to see if the Blade will run from that. The kernel booted but there were 
so many messages:


hda: lost interrupt

that it took about a minute just to read the partition table. Maybe the 
system would have come up in a few days, but I were not waiting for 
that. I tried the kernel parameter ide=nodma with no effect.


Thus I conclude that this machine is REALLY unwilling to run Linux.

I give up for now.

Thanks
Arne


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Re: Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:

On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 04:35:13PM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:


Hello,

I have no luck booting a Sun Blade 100 with 512M memory and PROM version 
4.6 from the Debian install media. I have tried the Official Woody CD, 
and BenC's latest netinst.iso and tftpboot.img. After the message



What sort of graphics card is installed?



I don't have the machine at hand right now, but there is a PCI graphics 
card installed, and the PROM displayed something like "Elite 3D/Lite" if 
I remember correctly. Maybe I should remove that card and try to use the 
on board graphics instead?


Thanks
Arne

Problem booting Sun Blade 100 with Debian install media

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

I have no luck booting a Sun Blade 100 with 512M memory and PROM version 
4.6 from the Debian install media. I have tried the Official Woody CD, 
and BenC's latest netinst.iso and tftpboot.img. After the message


Booting Linux..

nothing more seems to happen. Other sparcs (Ultra 10, Ultra 1, SS10, 
etc) boots fine from the same CDs.


Arne

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Woody security updated libc6-sparc64 clashes with Woody fakeroot

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

The latest security update to Woody libc6-sparc64 (2.2.5-11.1) changes 
/usr/lib/64 into a symlink. However, the Woody fakeroot package still 
has this name as a directory, and dpkg aborts. This change of 
/usr/lib/64 should have been kept out of Woody.


(and the gconv directory is still WAY too large ..., see
,
)

Arne

Re: libc6-sparc64 uses a lot of disk space

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:

On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 02:21:21PM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:


Hello,

The package libc6-sparc64 (version 2.2.5-6, in woody) uses 147MB of disk
space in /usr/lib/64/gconv, although the Installed-Size: field only
indicates 10MB for the entire package. /usr/lib/gconv only takes up 6MB.
Is this reasonable, or should a bug be filed?

The package is also at Priority: required, although it is not clear to
me that the package has any use on typical sparc32 systems.



$ du -sh /usr/lib64/gconv/
6.8M/usr/lib64/gconv



Presumably those numbers are from 2.2.5-7 (note change of path), so the 
problem is only in the woody version (2.2.5-6) then.


Arne






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libc6-sparc64 uses a lot of disk space

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

The package libc6-sparc64 (version 2.2.5-6, in woody) uses 147MB of disk
space in /usr/lib/64/gconv, although the Installed-Size: field only
indicates 10MB for the entire package. /usr/lib/gconv only takes up 6MB.
Is this reasonable, or should a bug be filed?

The package is also at Priority: required, although it is not clear to
me that the package has any use on typical sparc32 systems.

Arne

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Re: Building modules for Debian sparc kernels

[Arne Nordmark]

Ben Collins wrote:

Thanks for answering.

> 
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 08:28:19PM +0100, Arne Nordmark wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > When building kernel modules (specifically the OpenAFS module) to match
> > the kernels in the Debian archive for i386 and sparc, some questions
> > came up.
> >
> > For the i386 architecture, there is a separate kernel-headers package
> > for each kernel flavour, so building using these should produce working
> > modules. On sparc, there is only one kernel-headers package (for the
> > sun4cmd subarch?). Is building a kernel module say for sun4u-smp with
> > these headers guarateed to work? If not, one should probably have to get
> > the correct version of the kernel-source pachage (but this may have been
> > replaced in the archive) and the kernel-image source package (for
> > patches), so that way is not so desirable.
> 
> No, there is one kernel-headers package for sparc64 and sparc32 (both
> sets are in the same package).
> 
> I do not suggest using the headers to build modules. Use the whole
> source.

What would be a typical use of the kernel-headers, then?

> 
> > Another thing is that the kernel-image packages for sparc has the
> > sub-architecture in the package name, but not in the /lib/modules path.
> > The variables passed by make-kpkg to build a kernel module package does
> > not seem to be enough to inform about this situation, so the buildt
> > package will either miss the sun4xxx in the package name and kernel
> > dependencies, or have it in the /lib/modules path, dpeneding of how
> > make-kpkg is called, so in either case the .deb file will have to edited
> > by hand. For i386, there is no problem, as the flavour is present both
> > in the package name and the /lib/modules path.
> 
> You'll have to use the same method as the  source
> does.

What I was trying to point out, was that when running (at least in
potato, kernel-image-sparc-2.2 version 8)

make-kpkg --subarch sun4u-smp --arch_in _name modules_image

the module is built with

./debian/rules KVERS=2.2.19 KDREV=8 kdist_image

and the subarch info is not present. The module will have to construct a
control file and place the kernel modules in the file tree out of this
info. For example (like OpenAFS) one could use
Package: mymodules-$KVERS
Version: myversion+$KDREV
Recommends: kernel-image-$KVERS (= $KDREV)
and place the files in /lib/modules/$KVERS/xx/mymodule.o
but no matter what, there is no way to get different package names for
different subarchs.
Using

make-kpkg --flavour sun4u-smp modules_image

will not work either as the module is built with

./debian/rules KVERS=2.2.19-sun4u-smp KDREV=8 kdist_image

and the files will be incorrectly placed.

Thus, to me, it seems that the i386 way of making kernel-images and
-headers makes it easier to build modules (in the current kernel-package
framework), although it may be formally more correct to use --subarch
than --flavour.

Btw, many thanks for the great work done by all the Debian people.

Arne

> 
> Ben
> 
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Building modules for Debian sparc kernels

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

When building kernel modules (specifically the OpenAFS module) to match
the kernels in the Debian archive for i386 and sparc, some questions
came up.

For the i386 architecture, there is a separate kernel-headers package
for each kernel flavour, so building using these should produce working
modules. On sparc, there is only one kernel-headers package (for the
sun4cmd subarch?). Is building a kernel module say for sun4u-smp with
these headers guarateed to work? If not, one should probably have to get
the correct version of the kernel-source pachage (but this may have been
replaced in the archive) and the kernel-image source package (for
patches), so that way is not so desirable.

Another thing is that the kernel-image packages for sparc has the
sub-architecture in the package name, but not in the /lib/modules path.
The variables passed by make-kpkg to build a kernel module package does
not seem to be enough to inform about this situation, so the buildt
package will either miss the sun4xxx in the package name and kernel
dependencies, or have it in the /lib/modules path, dpeneding of how
make-kpkg is called, so in either case the .deb file will have to edited
by hand. For i386, there is no problem, as the flavour is present both
in the package name and the /lib/modules path.

Arne

Re: kernel for 2.2r4

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

I tried kernel-image-sparc-2.2_7 from the archives and I still see the
same NFS crash. Comparing the source package with _6 I could find no
change except the pci patch. Nor does kernel-source-2.2.19 have a recent
change. The changelog states that this closes #94477 though.

Arne

Ben Collins wrote:
> 
> On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 07:15:05AM +0200, Arne Nordmark wrote:
> > It was suggested to remove all versions except 2.2.19 for the 2.2r4
> > release, but 2.2.19-sun4u_6 has bug #94477 that reports kernel panic
> > when starting NFS on sun4u machines. In the change list of 2.2.20pre1
> > there was an NFS fix for sparc64.
> 
> I'll merge this change, and upload some new 2.2.19 images this weekend
> then.
> 
> Thanks,
>  Ben
> 
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kernel for 2.2r4

[Arne Nordmark]

It was suggested to remove all versions except 2.2.19 for the 2.2r4
release, but 2.2.19-sun4u_6 has bug #94477 that reports kernel panic
when starting NFS on sun4u machines. In the change list of 2.2.20pre1
there was an NFS fix for sparc64.

Arne

Problems after updating to latest slink

[Arne Nordmark]

Hello,

I have run into a number of problems after updating a slink SS2 with
stock 2.2.12 kernel
to the latest version.
If I remember correctly, only a few packages like apt, dpkg, and exim
were upgraded.
Now apt-get update newer finishes, nor does the apt dselect method. The
exim scripts like exicyclog
have broken substitutions, and do not run.
Am I just unlucky, or are there serious troubles with the latest slink?

Versions:
ii  apt 0.3.10slink11  Advanced front-end for dpkg
ii  exim2.05-2 Exim Mailer

Arne

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Documentation issues in disks-2.1.8.1

[Arne Nordmark]

A couple of points regarding the documentation in the latest
boot-floppies:

The HTML documentation has headings in French, like Résumé and
Table des matières. (Eric D. has French settings, I guess)

The file fdisk.txt has the contents:
** man page not found **

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Re: cgsix woes continue in 2.2-pre5

[Arne Nordmark]

Jules:
> Hiya,

> Some of you will remember me reporting watchdog resets on quitting X on my
> SS2 with a cgsix, in the late 2.1.x kernels.

> Various patches were applied - I tested some, to no avail.  

> Then, I stopped using my sparc for a while for unrelated reasons.  Now I
> have found time to try a 2.2.0.-pre5 kernel (I alien'ed it from an rpm
> into a deb).

> However, the watchdog reset still occurs whenever X is quit.  It's hard to
> get traces, since it normally screws the palette, but I'll have a go..

Just another data point: I had the same problem on a SS2 with an old
cg6 (GX rev 2, two slot card). After changing to a newer cg6 (TGX rev b,
single slot)
things work OK, both with 2.1.125 and 2.2.0-pre8, running slink.



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