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Re: Status of Debian on Sun Blade 150



Frans Pop wrote:

>Hi Wiktor,
>
>On Wednesday 27 April 2005 19:39, Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
>
>>And the problem I described with the parted is consistent on the same
>>machine. I can't get it to display partitions after I select manual
>>partitioning from its menu.
>>
>
>I'm afraid this is user error.
>You've put swap as the first partition (starting on cylinder 0). This 
>overwrites the sun-disklabel that is written in that location!
>The result is that parted no longer recognizes the disk during the 
>"second" installation.
>
>With sun-disklabel you are not allowed to put swap or RAID or LVM at the 
>start of the disk. ext2/ext3 are OK.
>
>See also:
>http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.sparc/apbs05.html#id2538449
>
>
I didn't do it. Solaris 9 installer did it! It is the one who put
swap space at clusters 0-258:

# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda (Sun disk label): 16 heads, 255 sectors, 19156 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4080 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/hda1           258       319    124440   83  Linux native  /boot
   /dev/hda2  u          0       258    526320    3  SunOS swap
   /dev/hda3             0     19156  39078240    5  Whole disk
   /dev/hda4         15391     19156   7680600    2  SunOS root
   /dev/hda5          3660      6744   6291360   83  Linux native  /
(sarge1)
   /dev/hda6          6744     10574   7813200   83  Linux native  /home
   /dev/hda7         10574     15391   9826680   83  Linux native  /
(sarge2)
   /dev/hda8           319      3660   6815640    8  SunOS home


BTW, that machine ALREADY WORKED before trying netboot. It had Solaris
installed first (hda{2,4,8}), with manually specified partition sizes,
then Debian has been installed side-by-side with Solaris (hda{1,5,6}).
All partitions have been visible before trying netboot, and they are still
visible after installing second Debian on spare (hda7) partition. And
fdisk still works too, just as it worked before testing the installation.
The machine still boots, too, both into sarge1 as well as sarge2.
(I can't put silo.conf here, because all machines are turned off ATM)

User error. That's impolite. 'Cause I've spent LOTS of time crafting
that multiboot configuration. The best proof is that installer DID
everything correctly first time (when all partitions were right), then
after formatting swap (hda2) it turned out that it was unable to display
partitions list anymore. From my POV it is the one to blame.

If it is indeed user error (I mean: the Solaris installer's and my error),
then I'm terribly sorry. But in that case please elaborate more how it
should be done The Right Way. Keep in mind that multiboot with a spare
partition is a must.

>P.S. If you want fdisk, just switch to VT2, wget the fdisk udeb from a 
>mirror [1] and 'udpkg -i' it.
>
>[1] http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/u/util-linux/
>
Wow, I didn't know that. Thank you very much!

With best regards,
Wiktor Wandachowicz



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