Bug#293867: installation on sparc ultra5 overwrites Master Boot Sectors with silo
Package: installation-reports
Version: Debian 3.0r2
Severity: important
Processor: UltraSPARC-IIi 440 MHz
Root Device: IDE
I have installed Debian Linux 3.0r2 on my ultra5
(There are two large IDE disks (60 GB and 120GB) with several versions
of solaris on there and now of course Debian Linux ;)
My main problem was that during my installation I had only
the possibility to let silo install on the master boot sectors.
(The possibility of making a boot floppy failed)
Afterwards neither solaris nor linux started but silo was installed.
I had to remove silo by starting the solaris boot cd and restore the
solaris boot blocks.
(On a root shell you can type
installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d
0s0
)
Afterwards I booted the Debian cd mounted my
linux partition and run silo -r /mnt -t to install silo on the linux
partition. Afterwards everything worked fine.
I can now boot silo or solaris from the OpenBoot and from silo I can
boot linux)
It would be great if the new debian has a possibility to let the
master boot blocks untouched. There should be one option e.g.
4. save silo installation (Master Boot Sector will not be changed)
Installing silo with the -t option seems to be a save method and does
not harm. It's really a nasty thing to remove silo (if something
goes wrong like in my example (perhaps too large disks) or you
want/have to remove linux/silo) and restore the old boot blocks.
Kind regards
Roland
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