Re: Fresh New potato boot disks from the 2.2.6 boot floppies

[Hermano Cabral <orion@darwin.helios.nd.edu>]

Quoting Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>:
> Here's a new set of boot disks that fixes quite a few problems with the
> older set. Anyone who had problems before, check these to see if they fix
> them. If you didn't have problems before, then check to make sure I didn't
> break anything :)

Machine: Sparc 1+ w/ fbtwo frame buffer

rescue disk for sun4cdm:
	Loads and uncompress the kernel, but hangs after displaying
	the message "Booting Linux...".  This is the same behavior as
	for the set of disks from 01/15.

rescue disk for sun4c:
	Loads and uncompress the kernel, and boots ok.  Installation
	seems to be ok (I didn't proceed further than mounting the swap 
	partition since this machine is my work machine and I didn't
	want to mess up with it).

I think the problem is with the support for the fbtwo frame buffer.  I
remember I had to recompile the kernel 2.2.14 with a different console
font (the only modification to the config file /boot/config-2.2.14) to
make it boot.  The original kernel didn't work (it would also hang with 
the messsage "Booting Linux...").

In another sparc 1+ equipped with a cgthree frame buffer, the same
rescue disk for sun4cdm as above loads and uncompress the kernel ok but
still has a problem after booting, although it no longer hangs.  The
problem happens after mounting the root system, when init is starting.
There are a couple of oops, and "cannot handle kernel paging request" 
messages, but the instalation process continues anyway, although I no
longer have access to any virtual terminal other than the first one. 
The rescue disk for sun4c seems to perform flawlessly in this machine
too.

As a last attempt, I mounted the rescue disk for sun4cdm and wrote
the custom compiled kernel on the top of the one originally there.  The
kernel now is uncompressed and booted, with no oops whatsoever.  The
instalation proceeded smoothly.  As an added bonus, the screen updates
are much faster than with the other rescue disks, albeit with a smaller
font.

I hope this provides some useful information.  Cheers,

-- 
Hermano Cabral