Bug#49172: ["Nigel R. Armfield" <N.R.Armfield@lmu.ac.uk>] Bug#49172: Boot problems

[Eric Delaunay <delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr>]

Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> 
> This sounds familiar -- anyone have a pointer here?
> 

-- Start of included mail From:  "Nigel R. Armfield" <N.R.Armfield@lmu.ac.uk>

> Package: boot-floppies
> Version: sparc
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm sorry to bother you with this problem, but I cannot find
> answers elsewhere and I'm reaching the limits of my patience.
> 
> I have not had any success at all booting a SPARC (IPX) from
> any of the rescue boot images that I have tried.
> 
> I have tried a number of different floppies, formatted them
> and written them a number of times but all with the same result.
> 
> At the Sparc boot prompt, I do a 'b floppy', the floppy
> fires-up, spells out 'SILO' one char at a time and then
> says:
> 
> Fatal error: Cannot read partition
> 
> Illegal or malformed device name
> 
> Fatal error: Cannot read partition
> 
> Fatal error: Cannot read partition
> 
> Image not found.... try again
> 
> Any pointers in the right direction would be very gratefully
> received - apologies if I haven't read the doc properly.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Nigel

I have the same problem with my Sparc2 which can boot or not every now and
then.  I suspect the problem is with the floppy drive itself because it succeed
to boot just after a powerup but fails after one hour working.

Could you try netboot instead?

Regards.

-- 
 Eric Delaunay                 | "La guerre justifie l'existence des militaires.
 delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr | En les supprimant." Henri Jeanson (1900-1970)