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

[Daniel Alvarez <d-alvarez@gmx.net>]

Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> 
> > > >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
> 
> I know that some sparc guys (was that Ben Collins?) said that floppy
> booting can be flakey.
> 
> >     When you've bootet you get into some programm compairable
> >     to the BIOS setup utility of PCs offering you a prompt, by holding
> >     down the <Stop> -key in the left upper corner of your keyboard
> >     (sorry if I'm boring some of you, but I can imagine that some may
> >     still haven't noticed this) and typing <a>. The command 'printenv'
> >     shows you a list of environmental variables, with some of them
> >     affecting the boot process. The variable indicating the device to
> >     boot from  is correct as SILO is starting, but maybe some other
> >     entry prevents it from serving it's purpose.
> 
> We do talk about this stuff in the Installation Manual.
> 
> >     Try out some values, and if that doesn't work, download the images
> >     again, maybe the part containing the begin of the kernel-image is broken.
> 
> I'm not sure -- it almost seems like bad partitioning on the Rescue
> disk?  Or just the flakey floppy reading code on the BIOS?
> 
> Should I just close this bug?  Any other thoughts?
> 

As the problem is mainly reported by owners of IPXs i also think
that it's a problem of slow hardware. On my LX it all works fine

dalvarez