Bug#330268: Acknowledgement (Sun: Blade100: serial console install fails after reboot)

[Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz>]

Further to my report:
- I ended up forcing a reboot by powering the machine off (as sending
  a break on the serial console didn't seem to work, and there was no
  functional tty or remote access)

- After rebooting the system complained that it couldn't fsck /dev/hda2
  (the root disk) and prompted for a root password; when I tried 
  manually, e2fsck failed with an "Illegal instruction" around the 
  second pass on the disk, irrespective of which disk partition I used.

- I then booted into the installer again, jumped out to a shell, mounted
  all the partitions and chroot'd into them, and did a bit of setup by
  hand, including installing ssh and starting the ssh server

- From the ssh session I tried running "/usr/sbin/base-config new"
  again, which reported that /bin/cp wouldn't run (!!).  I verified
  that /bin/cp was unable to copy a file, and ended up using apt to
  reinstall /bin/cp (and friends): apt-get --reinstall install coreutils
  I also reinstalled e2fsprogs just to be sure.

- I was then able to run "/usr/sbin/base-config new" through the ssh
  session (in a chroot onto the target disk booted from the network boot
  image)

This makes me suspect that something other than the locale selection was
causing the initial problems (after first boot), although I'm puzzled as 
to what it was, or what caused it.  (Especially since reinstalling packages
from the same Debian mirror -- ftp.nz.debian.org -- seemed to fix it.)

After rebooting again (from the new install) the system came up cleanly, 
and things like e2fsck ran okay.  At this stage I think the system is now 
functional.  But it's not the easiest Debian install I've done (and I've 
done lots of PC installs and a bunch of non-PC installs too).

Ewen

PS: The CPU in the Sun Blade 100 is in fact an UltraSparc IIe (Hummingbird)
    according to /proc/cpuinfo.  And FWIW, the lspci output:

blade100:~# lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. Ultra IIe
0000:00:03.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
0000:00:05.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
0000:00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
0000:00:0c.0 Bridge: Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. RIO EBUS (rev 01)
0000:00:0c.1 Ethernet controller: Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. RIO GEM (rev 01)
0000:00:0c.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. RIO 1394 (rev 01)
0000:00:0c.3 USB Controller: Sun Microsystems Computer Corp. RIO USB (rev 01)
0000:00:0d.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c3)
0000:00:13.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)
blade100:~#