Re: need bootable Sparc CD
On Thu, Mar 30, 2000 at 11:36:38PM -0600, Phil Howard wrote:
> I would like to get a full CD of the latest (2.1r5) version of Debian
> for Sparc. Of the various vendors of Debian CDs out there, they all
> fall under 1 of 4 categories: 1: dead or unreachable, 2: too lame to
> navigate, 3: are unclear about what the CD is (no version information),
> 4: don't offer 2.1r5.
2.1r5 is too new to find any CD vendors with it (most still have r4 I'm
sure)
> Maybe someone can make a custom CD?
I might be able to. No guarantees, but let me see.
> It has been suggested to me that I just install an earlier verion and
> run apt to upgrade. However, it has been my experience that upgrading
> which involves replacing an older version with a newer version can
> (this means does not always, but in some cases has been known to) cause
> problems itself. I've personally experienced this on way too many
> different systems to be ready to accept an advocate telling me that
> Debian would be an exception. I'm willing to be open minded to that
> idea AS I LEARN DEBIAN ... but for my first install, I want to do it
> all in one pass first, and come back and play around with it later.
Well, you asked for it :) Debian is *the* exception. We do not release a
whole new dist (and I mean major upgrades like 2.1 to 2.2) that cannot do
seemless upgrades. It's what we pride ourselves on. So 2.1r4 to 2.1r5 is a
cake walk (there are only ~15 packages that changed from r4 to r5, IIRC).
Believe me, it is nothing to upgrade a Debian system using apt-get.
> While exploring some areas on the web site some people have suggested,
> one possible approach has come to mind. A network install would have
> 3 basic steps: 1: get the kernel booted, 2: install the base system,
> 3: boot the base system and run apt against an HTTP collection of the
> rest of the files to build the full system. The web site listed a
> number of different ways to do this, but as it turns out, my situation
> prevents me from doing steps 1 and 2 in a viable way. Thus I have
> this suggestion, and I bring it up because it seems so obvious to me
> that maybe someone has actually done this already and might have such
> a thing available.
>
> The suggestion is, a mini-ISO, burnable into a bootable CD, that does
> the installation of ONLY the base system. Then from that base system
> the installation can continue via the network.
>
> I would need a Sparc version of this, if anyone has ever put such a
> thing together. How big would a base-only mini-ISO CD be, anyway?
> I would think it could be squeezed to under 40 meg.
Wow, you just caught me right before posting this info to the list. I have
a 63 meg bootable ISO image for sparc. However it is potato (2.2
upcoming). IMHO, it is actually much more stable than 2.1rX (for sparc that
is). You should really consider this your best option:
ftp://marcus.debian.net/pub/debian/disks-sparc/
--
-----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------
/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bmc@visi.net '
`---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'
Reply to: