Steve, Please contact me with your progress. Our Debian UltraLinux developers have decided to go for two-step approach. Rather than working with a hybrid RedHat based UltraPenguin system, we'd rather start with a Debian counterpart of UltraPenguin which is also 32-bit now. Most developers are happy working toward a 64-bit platform from a pure 32-bit Debian/sparc system.
I will get an UltraSPARC AXi based system back on Wednesday so I can work on installation too. I will also help on provide FTP space for your packages. If your Ultra-5 does not have enough space or resources to build packages, please use our xia01 and xia03. I will also help working on a web page to provide recent progress and how-tos on Debian installing on Ultras. I have a question though to Debian/Sparc team. Because one of our publically available system, xia02 which was an ancient SPARCstation 1+ with 16MB RAM, is too slow for any development work, Kachina has purchased a SPARCstation LX with 64MB RAM for Debian Project. We intended to install it with the latest 32-bit Debian system. However, last week I tried, the tftpboot image is still dated June. Even worse, most packages were missing so dselect simply cannot continue. I knew Eric has come up a new version and I saw some new packages have been uploaded. What is the status of the 32-bit SPARC Debian distribution? Why is linked in "sid" from "potato?" I installed sucessfully from "hamm" in July although I had to use floppies together with the tftpboot image booted from net. Thanks, --ward Ward Deng, Ph.D | Kachina Technologies, Inc. Vice President and COO | PO Box 9307 Tel: 505-888-5934 | Albuquerque NM 87119 Fax: 505-888-5902 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | URL: http://www.KachinaTech.COM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:07:26 -0500 From: Nils Lohner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Steve Dunham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: fwd: Debian sparc32 on Ultra status report Resent-Date: 14 Dec 1998 21:08:38 -0000 Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ; Steve posted this but got the ultra list wrong, so I'm forwarding it. I'll be unable to work on the ultra from Dec 18-Jan 04, maybe by then Steve will have something. _That_ would be a nice xmas present :) Nils. ------- Forwarded Message To: [email protected] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Debian sparc32 on Ultra status report Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) From: Steve Dunham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 14 Dec 1998 15:01:45 -0500 In-Reply-To: Christian Meder's message of "Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:51:37 +0100" Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> FYI: (I'm not even sure if anyone cares, but...) My two class projects were finished last week, so I had some more time to look into my attempt to install Debian sparc on an Ultra5. You'll recall that I managed to get the sparc32 Debian on an Ultra5 by using a kernel and modutils from "UltraPenguin". The needed bits were posted to my web site. This weekend I continued the project by building XF86_Mach64. I downloaded XFree 3.3.3 and applied the "sparc" and "ffb" patches from the UltraPenguin package. (Apparently the latest UltraPenguin includes the _register_frame_info bug as a compatibility feature with RedHat... go figure.) Aside from having to fix a few rejected patches and construct a XF86Config file, it worked flawlessly. I've also built a binutils that works with both sparc32 and sparc64 (it seems the trick was to compile binutils with egcs - if compiled with gcc it won't link 32-bit code - the UP spec file said something about a bug involving "long long" in gcc 2.7.x.) In conjunction with an "alien"ed copy of egcs64 from UltraPenguin, I successfully built a 64-bit kernel under Debian (cvs 2.1.130). Right now I'm building some of the missing general packages (like a recent icewm, gtk, etc), so I can switch to the Ultra5 as my primary machine and pass the intel machine to a coworker. Afterwards, I will start work on packaging the Ultra stuff up. (Modutils, binutils, egcs64, X servers, tilo, and kernel.) By the time sparc32 Debian is released with slink, or very soon thereafter, I should have an unofficial addon ready to make everything work on the Ultras which is as easy to install as the sparc32 distribution. (I'm aiming towards something that works on both, like UltraPenguin.) Eventually, I'd like to get the patched binutils and modutils into the official sparc distribution. I just wanted to let people know that it is possible, and that I'm within a few weeks of posting packages and a few simple instructions on how to install Debian on an UltraSparc. I would be interested in knowing if anyone else is interested in this or is running Debian on an UltraSparc. (It's my impression that the debian-ultrasparc project is aiming towards a 64-bit userland, which is a ways off.) Steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] - -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------- End of Forwarded Message -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
