Bug#60173: Sparc tftpboot.img doesn't work on sun4c, root.bin images are missing
Ben Collins wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 01:18:20PM +0100, Eric Delaunay wrote:
> > David Huggins-Daines wrote:
> > > Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> writes:
> > >
> > > > Wrong, root.bin is not subarch dependant. The file is in
> > > > current/images-1.44/
> > >
> > > Doh! I knew that, and yet I didn't look there (yet another argument
> > > against having these stupid images-1.44 directories :P)
> > >
> > > > Also, you you can use the a.out kernels with NFS root, but serving up
> > > > root.tar.gz (unpacked of course, and instructions are covered in the
> > > > install docs) from an NFS server.
> > >
> > > Ah yes, good idea. Thanks.
> >
> > How much memory your sparc is?
> > I guess tftpbooting requires >= 12MB or 16MB. I didn't run extensive tests
> > with low memory systems yet (my sparc2 is 64MB, and my Classic is 24MB).
> > It's on my todo list but don't have much spare time at the moment.
>
> According to what I have read, it requires less than 8 megs (atleast tilo
> says min 5 megs after creating the tftp image).
Correct me if I'm wrong but some old sparc prom only map 4MB at bootup.
Therefore downloading more than that will hurt at some point in the process.
If this is the case, could we revive the old tftpboot image from slink which
was only a sun4[cdm] image + ramdisk packed together with piggyback? It was
renamed tftpboot-noultra some time ago in the main trunk before it was removed.
Moreover, I guess it eats more than 8MB of memory when running: kernel +
ramdisk (uncompressed) + dbootstrap + libc + dynamic allocation when extracting
rescue image, drivers.tgz and base.tgz. For example, rescue is requiring
1.44MB ramdisk if installing for diskless client.
I don't have time to investigate on memory usage at the moment, but I will
surely do some trial in a week or so. OTOH I'm pretty sure 8MB is not enough
to successfully install from a tftpboot image. It might be enough however
using kernel+nfsroot.
Regards.
--
Eric Delaunay | S'il n'y a pas de solution, c'est qu'il n'y
delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr | a pas de problème. Devise Shadok.
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