Philippe Meunier wrote: > Hello, > > I recently rescued an unused Sun Ultra 5/10 that was going to end up > in the trash and I've been trying for several hours now to install > OpenBSD on it with no success whatsoever. It's a headless machine > with one internal disk, a CD drive, a floppy drive, and what looks > like a PCI card with two external VHDCI connectors. It's running > Solaris 2.7, and I'm connected to it through its serial port from a PC > running -current.
... > Then I downloaded OpenBSD/snapshots/sparc64/install45.iso from a mirror, > burned it to a CD-RW (using an OpenBSD laptop) by following the don't use CD-RWs on old computers. They don't like 'em. > instructions from faq13.html#burnCD, then tried to boot the Ultra > from the CD: > > ============================================================ > ok boot cdrom > Resetting ... > > > Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 300MHz), No Keyboard > OpenBoot 3.31, 256 MB (60 ns) memory installed, Serial #10409842. > Ethernet address 8:0:20:9e:d7:72, Host ID: 809ed772. > > > > Rebooting with command: boot cdrom > Boot device: /p...@1f,0/p...@1,1/i...@3/cd...@2,0:f File and args: > Can't read disk label. > Can't open disk label package > Evaluating: boot cdrom > > Can't open boot device > ============================================================ well, I've certainly booted an Ultra5 with a -current of a very few weeks ago. It worked. So: 1) your CDROM drive couldn't read the CDRW you used. 2) your CDROM drive is old and doesn't work well 3) Something broke as a result of the hackathon that just finished. That's the order I suspect. #3 is a distant third behind 1 and 2. > Trying to mount the CD using Solaris (after killing vold) failed as > well: > > ============================================================ > # mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s0 /mnt > mount: /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s0 no such device > ============================================================ that REALLY points at #1 or #2. (My solaris foo is a bit weak, so I'm just assuming your mount line was valid. It may be your solaris foo is weak, too. :) > Now I happen to have an old Solaris 2.6 installation CD around and I > can both mount it (using the exact same command as above) or boot from > it without problem. Pressed CDs are the easiest things for CD drives to read, apparently. As they age, CD-RWs are the first thing to not work (IF they ever worked...and a lot of old drives just couldn't handle them). CD-R's fail next (selectively -- sometimes brand X works, brand Y doesn't. I've got a small stack of CDR blanks that work in a certain iMac I have that can't read newer CDR blanks...failing drive). > So my guess is that the machine has a cheap and/or old CD drive that > has problems reading CD-RWs... ya. > Next I tried to install OpenBSD from Solaris, using one of the > existing partitions: ... > I used Solaris's newfs to re-create the file system on > /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s4 (bye bye /home), mounted it on /mnt, downloaded > bootblk, ofwboot, bsd, bsd.rd, base45.tgz, and etc45.tgz to /root > (through the serial port, after tar-ing and uuencode-ing the whole > thing; the Ultra is not connected to the network), copied bootblk and > ofwboot to /mnt, used Solaris's installboot to install bootblk on > /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s4, copied bsd and bsd.rd to /mnt, unpacked base45.tgz > and etc45.tgz there, and then rebooted: ouch. I'm sure it is possible to make an OpenBSD bootable partition from Solaris, but I doubt you can do it with standard Solaris tools. I believe OpenBSD/sparc64 has a "must boot from 'a' partition, and that partition must start at sector 0" limitation, so this wouldn't work even if it was a possible trick. > ============================================================ > ok boot disk:e bsd > [...] > Boot device: /p...@1f,0/p...@1,1/i...@3/d...@0,0:e File and args: bsd > OpenBSD IEEE 1275 Bootblock 1.1 > ..>> OpenBSD BOOT 1.3 > Memory Address not Aligned > ok Data Access Exception > ok Data Access Exception > ok Data Access Exception > ok Data Access Exception > ok Data Access Exception > [...] > ============================================================ (I'm actually surprised you got as far as you did in that boot process, which may show how wrong my "Can't do this from Solaris" is...) ... > Next I tried to go the miniroot way, just in case I had somehow messed > up while trying to install from Solaris. So I downloaded > miniroot45.fs to the machine, used Solaris's dd to write it to the > same partition as before and then tried to boot from it: > > ============================================================ > # dd if=miniroot45.fs of=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s4 bs=64b > 80+0 records in > 80+0 records out > # reboot > [...] > ok boot disk:e > [...] > Rebooting with command: boot disk:e > Boot device: /p...@1f,0/p...@1,1/i...@3/d...@0,0:e File and args: > OpenBSD IEEE 1275 Bootblock 1.1 > . > ============================================================ not sure why that didn't work, though I am going to SPECULATE that it might have something to do with the normal process is to put miniroot over the swap partition, which is (in Solaris) often the first physical partition on the disk. ... > And the machine froze after printing the dot. > > While I was at it I also tried to boot from a floppy, first using > floppyB45.fs (which I think is the right one for a PCI-based Ultra 10) > and then floppy45.fs. In both cases I got the same result: > > ============================================================ > ok boot floppy bsd > Resetting ... > > > Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 300MHz), No Keyboard > OpenBoot 3.31, 256 MB (60 ns) memory installed, Serial #10409842. > Ethernet address 8:0:20:9e:d7:72, Host ID: 809ed772. > > > > Rebooting with command: boot floppy bsd > Boot device: /p...@1f,0/p...@1,1/e...@1/fdthree File and args: bsd > Bad magic number in disk label > Can't open disk label package > Evaluating: boot floppy bsd you can't boot most Ultras from floppy, and in this case, the U5/U10 are part of "most". Use a CD-R, if that doesn't work, borrow a known good IDE CDROM. U5/U10s Just Work (when they ain't busted) Nick.
