On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 01:51:48AM +0100, Joost Kooij wrote: > Hi, > > On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Ben Collins wrote: > > > Ok, at http://xia01.kachinatech.com/~buildd/sparc-2.2.14-potato-boot/current > > you will find the latest set of boot disks. > > They work! Yay!
Excellent, thank you for the rather extensive report. I'll try to address each problem. Most of these I already noticed. I also succesfully installed from NFSROOT to an NFSROOT on this UltraSPARC. What I really need to add is an option to mount an NFS for the target, that we you wont have to do it manually. > resumes from the break, the kernel detects the keyboard. Could this be a > submodel problem or a particular hardware problem? (I did once replace a > dead buffer ic on the SLC's mainboard to get the keyboard working at all.) > My prom version is reported a 1.4 on the prom banner. Not sure, I'll have to check into that one. > I got the tftpboot.img in place in /tftpboot, set up rarp entries and > booted the SLC from the net. It failed to even boot and died with > "Illegal Instruction". This might be because of the decompression required. You were right to use the linux-a.out images. > > I configured the keyboard and got another error: it couldn't create a > file. The problem turned out to be the fact the root fs was mounted ro. > mount /dev/root / -n -o remount,rw fixed that. After repeating the > keyboard setup, it seemed to stick (well, not really as it wanted to > configure the keyboard again upon first reboot of the base system.) I think I have this fixed, and it shouldn't be a problem in the next set. > On another note, the prom console is S L O W , especially on a SLC. > Running top on the console takes >75% system resources.. I'm lucky to > have owned a Commodore 64 and to have once been amazed at the speed of the > 1541 disk drive. It made sitting through the install a little more > bearable ;-) The sun4cdm kernel should use the framebuffer console. Hopefully it is a little faster than the PROM console. > The menu selection is slightly off: there is no reverse video bar, just a > cursor that appears one line too high. Only the module configuration > dialogs get it right, although it too has quirks, the screen is cleared > twice inbetween screens (takes a long time on my machine, so I noticed > that particularly.) This is probably because of the black-on-white of the console, while dboostrap is expecting white-on-black. Not sure if there is a way around this. The slink boot floppies use to have "color" "not color" choice at the start of dbootstrap. > Generally, http proxy failed, because a DNS name resolution is attempted > on the hostname in the url to be requested at the proxy. I'm behind > (several) firewalls and cannot resolve external hosts. I had to download > using netscape and put the files on a local http server. The http install method is rather new. I'm sure it can use some cleaning up and enhancing. > could not find /etc/inittab. Upon inspection on the nfs-server, I found a > file /etc/inittab.real instead. I renamed it and booted again, it worked. There is supposed to be a normal inittab. I already fixed this problem for the next set. Most likely without the stub inittab, somethings on your system were not setup completely. > At boot, kerneld seems to get started, even though I'm running a 2.2 > kernel. Perhaps a /proc problem? Package problem with modutils, maintainer is aware. > The console is somewhat broken. I cannot start dselect, for example, it > dies with "Error opening terminal: linux". Hmm, maybe ncurses is missing some things :/ > The default /etc/apt/sources.list uses "stable" urls. This will break > upon release in the non-us case, because in the to-be-stable potato, the > directory layout is different from still-stable slink. I noticed this > after I changed the urls to point to unstable trees. Yeah, most than likely these should be changed to "potato" URI's. > Apt-get works. But dpkg sometimes fails, I suspect this is related to > out-of-memory situations. When I run dpkg with a -D22 option, it works > flawlessly, perhaps because the console output makes it go so slow. There is a lowmem option to dpkg, you can add dpkg options to /etc/apt/apt.conf (man apt.conf). > > Any one who had problems before, please let me know how these do. > > They're great! At last I can boot Linux on the SLC and I'm pleased that > Debian is the first to get it working. The whole familiarity of the > installation interface, the Debian GNU/Linux system, apt-get, all that > stuff that I'm used to have on x86 systems, it is all there, on this > pretty ancient (10 yrs old) SparcStation SLC - I'm impressed! Excellent, good to hear :) -- -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------ / Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \ ` [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
