Re: SLC nfsroot install report (Re: ANN: new boot disks to test)
On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 01:51:48AM +0100, Joost Kooij wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Ben Collins wrote:
>
> > Ok, at http://xia01.kachinatech.com/~buildd/sparc-2.2.14-potato-boot/current
> > you will find the latest set of boot disks.
>
> They work! Yay!
Excellent, thank you for the rather extensive report. I'll try to address
each problem. Most of these I already noticed. I also succesfully
installed from NFSROOT to an NFSROOT on this UltraSPARC. What I really
need to add is an option to mount an NFS for the target, that we you wont
have to do it manually.
> resumes from the break, the kernel detects the keyboard. Could this be a
> submodel problem or a particular hardware problem? (I did once replace a
> dead buffer ic on the SLC's mainboard to get the keyboard working at all.)
> My prom version is reported a 1.4 on the prom banner.
Not sure, I'll have to check into that one.
> I got the tftpboot.img in place in /tftpboot, set up rarp entries and
> booted the SLC from the net. It failed to even boot and died with
> "Illegal Instruction".
This might be because of the decompression required. You were right to use
the linux-a.out images.
>
> I configured the keyboard and got another error: it couldn't create a
> file. The problem turned out to be the fact the root fs was mounted ro.
> mount /dev/root / -n -o remount,rw fixed that. After repeating the
> keyboard setup, it seemed to stick (well, not really as it wanted to
> configure the keyboard again upon first reboot of the base system.)
I think I have this fixed, and it shouldn't be a problem in the next set.
> On another note, the prom console is S L O W , especially on a SLC.
> Running top on the console takes >75% system resources.. I'm lucky to
> have owned a Commodore 64 and to have once been amazed at the speed of the
> 1541 disk drive. It made sitting through the install a little more
> bearable ;-)
The sun4cdm kernel should use the framebuffer console. Hopefully it is a
little faster than the PROM console.
> The menu selection is slightly off: there is no reverse video bar, just a
> cursor that appears one line too high. Only the module configuration
> dialogs get it right, although it too has quirks, the screen is cleared
> twice inbetween screens (takes a long time on my machine, so I noticed
> that particularly.)
This is probably because of the black-on-white of the console, while
dboostrap is expecting white-on-black. Not sure if there is a way around
this. The slink boot floppies use to have "color" "not color" choice at
the start of dbootstrap.
> Generally, http proxy failed, because a DNS name resolution is attempted
> on the hostname in the url to be requested at the proxy. I'm behind
> (several) firewalls and cannot resolve external hosts. I had to download
> using netscape and put the files on a local http server.
The http install method is rather new. I'm sure it can use some cleaning
up and enhancing.
> could not find /etc/inittab. Upon inspection on the nfs-server, I found a
> file /etc/inittab.real instead. I renamed it and booted again, it worked.
There is supposed to be a normal inittab. I already fixed this problem for
the next set. Most likely without the stub inittab, somethings on your
system were not setup completely.
> At boot, kerneld seems to get started, even though I'm running a 2.2
> kernel. Perhaps a /proc problem?
Package problem with modutils, maintainer is aware.
> The console is somewhat broken. I cannot start dselect, for example, it
> dies with "Error opening terminal: linux".
Hmm, maybe ncurses is missing some things :/
> The default /etc/apt/sources.list uses "stable" urls. This will break
> upon release in the non-us case, because in the to-be-stable potato, the
> directory layout is different from still-stable slink. I noticed this
> after I changed the urls to point to unstable trees.
Yeah, most than likely these should be changed to "potato" URI's.
> Apt-get works. But dpkg sometimes fails, I suspect this is related to
> out-of-memory situations. When I run dpkg with a -D22 option, it works
> flawlessly, perhaps because the console output makes it go so slow.
There is a lowmem option to dpkg, you can add dpkg options to
/etc/apt/apt.conf (man apt.conf).
> > Any one who had problems before, please let me know how these do.
>
> They're great! At last I can boot Linux on the SLC and I'm pleased that
> Debian is the first to get it working. The whole familiarity of the
> installation interface, the Debian GNU/Linux system, apt-get, all that
> stuff that I'm used to have on x86 systems, it is all there, on this
> pretty ancient (10 yrs old) SparcStation SLC - I'm impressed!
Excellent, good to hear :)
--
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/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bmc@visi.net '
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