On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 10:26:31PM +1030, David Fitch wrote: > ok... I've googled and found lots of people with the same > problem but nowhere found the answer... > > Trying to install debian (sparc non-us disk one) 2.2r4 on a sparc5, > I can't boot the cd - I get: > > bad magic number in disk label > can't open disk label package > > it's not the machine or cd drive etc as I can boot off a solaris 8 > cd fine. All I can guess is the ISO i downloaded got some weird > corruption in the boot sector or whatever but would prefer to avoid > downloading it again (another 3 days of ftp'ing!).
I have hacked with Solaris CD's quite a bit for work, and I have to say they are a particularly wierd thing. They have 6 slices from memory, the first being a cdfs with all the packages, the others being hfs slices, the first with a root filesystem, and the last 4 with boot blocks for different architectures. e.g. for ultra arch, there is a ":f" on the end of the devalias for "cdrom" (a=0 b=1 c=2 d=3 e=4 f=5), as the boot block for ultra is on the 6th slice. The debian cd is different however, with only one slice which it manages to somehow boot.... (if someone can explain how this works, I would appreciate it) I have heard the drivers for floppy and cdrom drivers in the openboot prom are pretty awfull. And I have had the problem you have had several times. > > But ideally, what's the problem??? > A few things to try: 0) See if the cd really is corrupt using the md5sum. 1) Try again. Sometimes after a few goes at "boot cdrom" it just works. 2) Try a different cdrom drive. I have an old sparcstation 2 here, which wouldn't boot the debian cd from an external cdrom drive (solaris worked fine), but sticking in an internal drive I borrowed from an Ultra 1 it worked fine. 3) Make the 4 base boot floppies, and then install the base system from the cd. 4) Install the entire base system from floppy. Once the system is going the cd will probably work fine. 5) See if there is an upgrade for your prom from sun. (Search for "Hardware/PROM" on sunsolve) Floppies are available here: http://www.au.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/ch-install-methods.en.html#s-file-descs You need a rescue, root and two driver disks. Also all the base disks if you decide to do it that way. -Colin
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