Re: New set of sparc boot disks
After a night of toiling I got Potato on my Sparc 5 (Microsparc II, 128Mb,
ROM v2.10)
Thanks for the advice jedd and max ;)
I thought it would be good to share my experience so here goes.
-created sun4cdm rescue and driver floppy using those
from marcus.debian.net (jan15). No root.bin floppy so I made one
from the slink distribution.
-boots ok, partitioning ok etc, but no way to install kernel and drivers.
-install from rescue floppy fails (/dev/fd0 not configured error msg)
- dbootsrap eventually hangs..
-install from mounted, nfs or network fails but the error flashes
quickly as the installer reprompts the install from selection menu.
(If I read correctly, something about IOCTL: LOOP_BLK device... )
Note: I could actually mount nfs partitions and ls them etc but the
installer balks..
- vt2 displays only things like: dbootstrap returned 29 or the like.
Pressed Stop-A.
- tried the tftp.img from marcus.debian.net
- same story. No way to install the kernel and drivers.
Stop-A.
- tried the slink tftp-2.2.1.img.
- boots ok. Install kernel and drivers from nfs or mounted works after
a few tries creating the appropriately named files and directories (grrrr..)
- install continues and goes smoothly. Had to try 4 blank floppys
before success at creating bootfloppy. (damn these cheapo floppies)
- reboot
- install mimimal slink system (~50Mb, with compiler )
- change /etc/apt/sources.list to point to potato
- apt-get update
- apt-get -f dist-upgrade
- cannot upgrade libc6 because need at least kernel-2.2.7 (got 2.2.1)
- download 2.2.14, compile
(there could be more help about the options but it was ok otherwise)
- reboot
- from here on it was the usual struggle (8^) with dselect/apt-get. All was
quite fine except a coupla things.
1)uninstall pppconfig fails.
remove script returns error: wrong exec architecture
2)emacs19 install fails: (why are there 2 versions anyway ?)
cannot open bytecomp: no such file or directory
3)why is there a link /usr/lib/X11/XF86Config -> /etc/X11/XF86Config ?
(where are xsun settings anyway )
4) wrong(?) dependencies vrt. xbase-clients and fontfiles (100dpi, 75dpi)
Had to install the fonts by hand.
5)the window manager doesn't start (??). I'm mystified on this one.
Followed the Xsession script and checked the files etc and all seems ok.
Will check again later.
But in the end, I'm now a happy debian-sparc potato user 8^)
Tnx
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