Re: Problems with SILO (Sparc slink)

[Eric Delaunay <delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr>]

John Chapman wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Kurt Mosiejczuk wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Detlev Zundel wrote:
> > 
> > > It is indeed `s' as I managed to write a Sun label by now - but it does
> > > still not occurr in the help.
> > 
> > The thing is, I remember it being there (on the help).  Cause I wouldn't have
> > known which one to use otherwise...  So, I'd like to find out why it doesn't
> > show on yours.
> 
> It's one of those perverse realities, I'm afraid.  If your disk has
> already been formatted with DOS-style partitions, the "s" option does not
> appear.  It is, however, present, even though invisible; just type an "s"
> at the prompt, and you should see a Sun disklabel screen.
> 
> In any case, you will also need to install SILO, so that the firmware will
> know how to boot from your disk.  This ought to happen at the "make Linux
> bootable from hard disk" step.
> 
> Best wishes!

Hmm, this thread is too repetitive.  I propose to fix the installer to enfore a
Sun disklabel on the disk.
I guess it could be fixed in either 2 ways:
- add some obscure option to fdisk telling it to treat non Sun disklabel the
  same way as blank disk
- or check for a Sun disklabel before calling fdisk, zeroes the partition table
  if not found, then call fdisk.

As the maintainer of sparc bootdisks, I can implement the later. I think I can
even send a patch upstream to fix the former.  Let's just choose one of them...

Any advice?

-- 
 Eric Delaunay                 | "La guerre justifie l'existence des militaires.
 delaunay@lix.polytechnique.fr | En les supprimant." Henri Jeanson (1900-1970)