Bug#293867: This bug is much worse in Etch.
This bug is much worse in Etch. Debian-Installer overwrites the
Solaris partition's bootloader, without even asking! I am changing
the severity level to Critical. One of the definitions of Critical
is "makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system)
break." This bug breaks Solaris, which is unrelated software.
IMHO a fix for this bug should be included in 4.0r2; the potential
harm is too severe to justify fixing it only in Lenny.
Fortunately for me, unlike Mr. Egger, my new Debian installation
was usable (see Bug #449012) so at least I had one good operating
system. I was able to repair the damage using the newly installed
Debian, without needing a Solaris CD. For the benefit of others
who will be hit by this bug, I'll show how I repaired the damage.
Either:
dd if=/boot/old.b of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 seek=1 count=15
silo -t
Or:
mkdir /mnt/solaris
mount -rt ufs /dev/hda1 /mnt/solaris
find /mnt/solaris -name bootblk
# pathname of bootblk, below, is as found by the FIND command above
dd ibs=15b count=1 conv=sync obs=1b seek=1 of=/dev/hda1 \
if=/mnt/solaris/usr/platform/sun4u/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk
umount /mnt/solaris
rmdir /mnt/solaris
silo -t
If you're paranoid, you'll want to retrieve both old.b and bootblk,
and verify that they are identical, modulo NUL-padding at the end.
(Mine were identical.)
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