Re: New 2.4.27-2 kernel and d-i images available for sparc - testers wanted
I'll clarify what I can here.
Regarding Ubuntu, if you do not compile SILO with GCC 2.95 it will not
boot right on SPARCs because later compilers mistakenly generate
floating point CPU instructions not available during boot time. That's
probably what they did wrong.
My kernel config file should get 2.6 going for you when you feel like trying it.
As for boot images, the best ones I know of are at:
http://people.debian.org/~joshk/d-i/images/daily/
The Sarge net inst CDs use some kind of 2.4, but it fluctuates a
little over time, so I can't say for sure because the last one I
burned is old. I used the Sid D-I disc because Sid does not have as
big of a lag time on fixing bugs because it never gets frozen for
release like Sarge is right now. I burnt it from here:
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sid_d-i/sparc/
I installed from one of those before I knew about Josh's daily burns,
which apparently are a bit better.
I also concur that the RAMDISK missing is a bad sign that something is
wrong with the image. That's really not supposed to happen because if
the RAM disk doesn't mount you can't get to the tools that you need to
accomplish anything. That needs to be fixed, perhaps a bug report's in
order.
Anyhow, I foresee about two courses of action:
1) If you're feeling bored/patient/willing to waste some time, play
with the Sid D-I and Josh image builds for a while.
2) If you just want to go on with life, consider trying a
dist-upgrade. Note that it could be hard to do because newer libc's
only support newer kernels, so there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg
glitch in the upgrade path. I keep hoping they will iron this out
before release, but until it is, it's actually often easier just to
install Sid straight away instead of trying to upgrade your way into
it.
Hope this helps,
Matt
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