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Re: Custom SPARC netboot image



Sven Luther wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 09:10:12PM -0400, Andy Goth wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 11:14:49PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> >
> > > Notice that there are 2.6.12 backports for sarge, including
> > > already build powerpc and x86 packages,

(When) will a SPARC build appear?

> > Good, although I'm comfortable building my own.  (But on the other
> > hand, all my kernel-building experience is with x86, so maybe I'm
> > not...)
>
> well, this is a common package, so you just need to dpkg-buildpackage
> -rfakeroot -us -uc -B on a sparc box or something such.

Yeah, and this would be my first time Debian-packaging a kernel image.

> > > The third possibility is to install sid/etch in your future swap
> > > partition, and then debootstrap sarge on the normal system and
> > > then go from there.
> >
> > How much space do I need to install an Etch capable of running
> > debootstrap?
>
> Just the base system, i used to do install on my 512MB swap, so i
> guess you want at least 1MB swap, which will work just fine.

I made a directory, /nfsroot/, and debootstrap sarge'd it.  I then
chrooted to it, base-config'ed, and installed the packages I'd be
needing on each of my nodes.  Next I netbooted another SPARC, passing
nfsroot=10.0.0.1:/nfsroot to make it use this directory rather than the
local hard disk.  Once the system was up, I partitioned and formatted
the hard disk, severally mounted its partitions, and copied from / to
/mnt/*.  I installed SILO to disk, and rebooted.  It only took me ten
hours. :^)

The "ip=rarp" kernel option doesn't seem to work right (the kernel gets
a wildly wrong address, even though OpenBoot succeeds).  Has anyone else
tried it?  I believe I'll switch to DHCP to dodge this problem, but
first I need to put a second NIC in one node.

I haven't had much luck with netboot initrds.  The initrd that comes
with d-i works just fine, and I am reasonably sure I successfully
modified it once or twice.  (My linuxrc ran.)  But it seems my luck has
run out.  Now the kernel fails to mount its initrd (which I
piggyback64'ed onto my a.out), and it doesn't seem to be looking in the
right place for it anyway ("0"??).  Therefore I had to compile in
support for NFS and my network card, since the kernel can't get modules
from its initrd.  Grumble.  And I'm even using tftpboot.sh to make my
boot images!  SILO-loaded initrd works, though.

-- 
Andy Goth
   <amgoth@link.com>
   <unununium@openverse.com>

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