Re: Status of Debian on Sun Blade 150
Jurij Smakov wrote:
Everyone is working towards the same goal here, so let's not get
too picky about the choice of words.
Thanks for bringing me back to my senses. Let's focus on the topic.
# fdisk -l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda (Sun disk label): 16 heads, 255 sectors, 19158 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4080 * 512 bytes
Device Flag Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 258 319 124440 83 Linux native
/dev/hda2 0 258 526320 3 SunOS swap
/dev/hda3 0 19158 39082320 5 Whole disk
/dev/hda4 15391 19156 7680600 2 SunOS root
/dev/hda5 3660 6744 6291360 83 Linux native
/dev/hda6 6744 10574 7813200 83 Linux native
/dev/hda7 10574 15391 9826680 83 Linux native
/dev/hda8 319 3660 6815640 8 SunOS home
I'd like to reiterate: I was doing tests on a live system. It came
to life this way:
1) Install Solaris 9 on a clean disk:
+----------------------------------+ \
| hda2 SunOS swap 514 MB | \
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda8 SunOS home 6 GB | |
| UFS / (Solaris) | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| | |
| | \
| | > hda3 Whole disk
| | /
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda4 SunOS root 6,5 GB | |
| UFS / (Solaris) | |
| | /
+----------------------------------+ /
Solaris installer proposed this in different way:
(look where hda1 and hda2 were going to be!)
+----------------------------------+ \
| hda2 SunOS swap 514 MB | \
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda8 SunOS home ~23 GB | |
| | |
| | \
| | > hda3 Whole disk
| | /
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda1 SunOS root 6 GB | |
| | |
| | /
+----------------------------------+ /
... but I persuaded it to the previous layout.
2) Use a mixture of Debian/sparc64 and Gentoo/sparc64
install CDs to create additional partitions and ext2/ext3
filesystems:
+----------------------------------+ \
| hda2 SunOS swap 514 MB | \
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda1 Linux native 126 MB | |
| ext2 /boot (separate) | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda8 SunOS home 6 GB | |
| UFS / (Solaris) | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda5 Linux native 6 GB | |
| ext3 / (Debian) | \
| | > hda3 Whole disk
+----------------------------------+ /
| hda6 Linux native 6 GB | |
| ext3 /home (separate) | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda7 Linux native ~10 GB | |
| ext3 empty (spare) | |
| | |
| | |
+----------------------------------+ |
| hda4 SunOS root 6,5 GB | |
| UFS /home (Solaris) | |
| | /
+----------------------------------+ /
3) Install Debian sarge around February 14th 2005.
I didn't let parted format any partitions apart from maybe
hda5 and hda6 (I can't remember really). Instead, I ordered
it to use existing partitions without deleting contents,
because they were empty. And it worked.
At that point it was a real achievement, b/c current d-i was
unusable on Sun Blade 150 at the time. So I used an old version,
dated 20040511, with kernel 2.4.26. It was a long process, but
eventually I've finished that with only minor problems.
After that I've had a working multiboot machine. Debian sarge
became the default, whereas specifying 'other=4' in silo.conf
let the Solaris start. A one-liner into boot scripts let the
Debian reuse Solaris swap (an mkswap before swapon, really).
Overall success, if you ask me.
4) Then me and another fellow cloned the 'mother copy' to the
remaining 9 machines, using a mixture od 'dd', 'scp', and
several other programs. Don't ask. It just worked.
5) Recently I tested the unofficial netboot installer, just as
Jurij asked. On the first run parted could see all the partitions
correctly. So I think this proves that I did everything right.
I let the partitioner format hda1 (/boot), doing a backup first
onto hda5, of course. A fresh Debian has been installed on the
spare hda7 partition. In the end SILO 1.4.8 has been replaced
by SILO 1.4.9, the fresh Debian became the default, and the only
bootable system on the machine. I added several lines to silo.conf
(just the like I had in backup), this way I can boot three OS-es
now (Solaris9, Debian sarge and fresh Debian sarge). After that
I've found a problem in SILO 1.4.9 which I reported as bug #306012
(it doesn't display a message file before boot prompt).
On every next run parted became unable to list existing partitions.
The machine still boots, I checked the partitions using fdisk
(the dump at the beginning of my post is from this fdisk, actually).
Everything works apart parted. Something is strange.
I hope that the above clears my position and shows that my intentions
are pure :-)
Hoping to find a reasonable resolution and friendly,
Wiktor Wandachowicz
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