Tom,
T Korte wrote:
>
> I'm not sure if this will help, but when I did installs on my UltraSparc I had
> to delete the first partition and recreate it to get things to work. For you,
> however, if you can't boot off the floppy this may not be the same problem. If
> you're going to give it another try then I'd suggest recreating the first
> partition on each disk. It seems that the distro cannot use block 0 and has to
> start at block 1 in order to work. However, I've seen a posting here where
> someone couldn't get it to work unless he used block 0, but that seems to be
> the exception.
On this machine, it takes too long to re-install to do a full set of tests; but
in case there is a problem, it appears that installing with boot-device=disk,
then after the install, changing it to disk3 seems to overcome this one.
Strange, since the install claims to put SILO on /dev/sda... and sd@0,0 is
clearly sdb...
In case someone missed this point: sda=sd@3,0 and sdb=sd@0,0 on most (all?)
Sparcs... is this taken into consideration in the Sparc install?
This was the first time I succeeded overwriting Solaris with Linux. Block 0 is
not used in any partition. The partitioning step has me puzzled... since only
auto-install worked (all others failed miserably), at this step, I decided to
not push my luck and use Clear All and Auto-Allocate... strangely, this gave
different results the first few times, kinda like random sizes; after which it
settled down to being the same. I've also noticed this on my x86 laptop...
So, now I can start Linux on the Sparc; but during the install, two packages
failed to install (numlock & XFree86). Rather than mess with the only install
mode that seems to work, I ignored the errors. Later, numlock installed fine;
but I can't install XFree86 which insists on xinitrc which insists on XFree86
which...(loop forever). Even using --force and --noscripts, it continues to
insist on the other package. Is there some other option I'm missing?
Also, for some reason, networking was not setup; I'll try to work on this today.
> BTW, keep putting the string "sparc" in your subject line so that my filters
> will catch it. Otherwise there's too much stuff to read that's not relevent to
> sparc's.
Agreed; I have a "sparc" filter too...
> Hope this helps.
> Tom Korte
Only to strengthen my feeling that there is almost no error handling in the
install process(es)... :>
Thanks,
Pierre
> On Mon, 14 Aug 2000, you wrote:
> > Craig Bartelloni wrote:
> > >
> > > what kind of filesytem is /
> > > if it is reiserfs i don't believe the system will boot from that it needs
> > > to be ext2 ....
> >
> > Since the only install that appears to work is auto-install, I would have
> > expected it to use what would work for what it installs. Besides, I didn't see
> > any reference to reiserfs when partitioning; though I may have missed it...
> >
> > Specifically, I get:
> > ## boot:
> > ##
> > ## Cannot find /boot/vmlinuz (Unknown ext2 error)
> > ##
> > ## Image not found.... try again
> >
> > If I change boot-device and boot-file to point to /boot/vmlinuz (this bypasses
> > SILO), I get:
> > ## The file just loaded does not appear to be executable.
> >
> > Booting from floppy gives the same SILO failure.
> >
> > Given the way I setup the filesystems (see below), does SILO get installed on
> > the drive currently specified in boot-device? If so, does SILO assUme that the
> > root partition will be on the same drive?
> >
> > If I have the right info (damn Sun for making sd0=sd@3,0 and sd3=sd@0,0 :^P ),
> > the install looks like this:
> >
> > Drive Sun SCSI Linux Contents
> > int/1GB sd0 sd@3,0 sda 1(/), 2(swap), 4(/home), 5(/usr/local)
> > ext/1.3GB sd3 sd@0,0 sdb 1(/usr)
> >
> > with SILO on sdb. I'm no longer sure, but I suspect boot-device was set to
> > disk3 when I installed...
> >
> > SILO appears to be unaware that /boot is on the other drive.
> >
> > Looks like I'll have to re-install unless someone has an idea...
> >
> > Pierre
> >
> > > craig bartelloni
> > > Lucent Technologies
> > >
> > > On Mon, 14 Aug 2000, Pierre Fortin wrote:
> > >
> > > > Got some time to try hydrogen-2 again on my old Sparc 2 (4/75)... after
> > > > re-downloading to correct a bad original ISO.
> > > >
> > > > I tried installing about a dozen times (GUI, expert, text, devel, workstation,
> > > > ...); each time all sorts of _random_ errors. It was so bad I suspected my
> > > > CDROM drive... until I decided to try an automatic install... Welllllll....!
> > > > Installed the 1st CD without error; could not install the 2nd because the
>system
> > > > would not allow me to eject the 1st.
> > > >
> > > > I thought to myself: "finally!!"...
> > > >
> > > > <SIGH> Now the system loads SILO from the HD; but can't find /boot/vmlinuz and
> > > > SILO does not seem to support L1-A or any other interrupt to get into the
> > > > loader...
> > > >
> > > > I have two 1GB HDs:
> > > > sda: /, swap, /home, /usr/local
> > > > sdb: /usr
> > > >
> > > > Any ideas how to get system to boot...?
> > > > Do I need to change any env. vars? boot-device? boot-file?
> > > > Should the boot-device be set to the drive with the root partition for SILO's
> > > > installation?
> > > > Other?
> > > >
> > > > Pierre
> > > >
> > > >
> >
> > --
> > Linux (Up 22 days) -- Reboots are for system upgrades...
> > Currently running 208 processes; CPU activity: user=0.6%, system=0.5%
> > Last reboot reason: Installed new BackUPS power supply.
--
Linux (Up 24 days) -- Reboots are for system upgrades...
Currently running 216 processes; CPU activity: user=1.4%, system=0.9%
Last reboot reason: Installed new BackUPS power supply.
