RE: Debian on Sparc 4 - woody to sarge

After looking around a bit more it seems like this could be some sort of module issue.

I have the correct settings in /etc/network/interfaces

I noticed a post on the net regarding a similar issue which said that there was no discover1 seen in the output and that modules were being loaded specifically. Looking at the kern.log I cannot find a line with discover1 and I see 5 modules being loaded and lsmod shows them to be: -

/etc/modules is empty but it says it should have a list of modules being loaded at boot time.

under /etc/modutils/arch there isn't anything which looks like a sparc module, just alpha, atari, i386, various m68k files, various powerpc files, s390 and s390x

Although in the modules.conf there is no processing of the arch files, so it seems that it isn't needed there.

This could be tantamount to chasing a gazelle and about as much use as a chocolate fireguard but I see the file paths under modutils is empty but should specify a path to where the modules reside. Perhaps that is taken care of in the code somewhere as I see under /lib/modules there is a directory for both kernels.

One thing to note here is that there are more modules under the old kernel, which as it is 2.2.x I wasn't sure if it was a modular kernel, I thought that was with 2.4.x only.

I see under the /lib/module/2.2.x directory there is no sunhme.o, yet there is under /lib/modules/2.4.x/kernel/drivers/net ... doesn't sunhme.o take care of my eth0 interface? ... or not as the case maybe :-)

I have managed to find the 5 modules under various subdirectories of /lib/modules/2.4.x why are there just 5 loaded?

I cannot find a reference to the 5 modules loaded in either the /etc/modules.conf or the associated /etc/modutils files.

Seems I will definitely need some help here as I cannot manually configure the interface. Even though there is a reference to it in the kern.log, I get a "No such device" when I try to configure it.

Here's hoping that someone out there knows the answer as I am very reluctant to just start editing files and rebooting, which I still have not done by the way ;-)

Well, I gave it another bash, but I still experienced a problem with the reboot.

Applicable output seen are: -

VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1

devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)

devfs: boot_options 0x0

Console: switching to mono PROM 80x34

pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077

RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 812K size 1024 blocksize

Initializing Cryptographic API

NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0

IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes

TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 8192)

NET4: Unix domian sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda1" or 08:01

Please append a correct "root=" boot option

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:01

Press L1-A to return to the boot prom

I have no idea what L1-A is and cannot seem to get a prompt, so I rebooted and used 'stop-a' to get the boot prompt.

I used the following command: -

linux image=1/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-2-sparc32 initrd=1/boot/initrd.img-2.4.2.27-2-sparc32 root=/dev/sda1

It appeared to be working, decompressing the image, but then I just got what appeared to be the prom prompt back: -

Uncompressing image...

Loading initial ramdisk....

PROMLIB: obio_ranges 1

bootmem_init: Scan sp_banks, init_bootmem(spfn[20a],bpfn[20a],mlpfn[3faf])

free_bootmem: base[0] size[3faf000]

reserve_bootmem: base[1000000] size[10d000]

reserve_bootmem: base[0] size[20a000]

reserve_bootmem: base[20a000] size[7f8]

Booting Linux

Type 'go' to resume

Type help for more information

Typing 'go' booted into Linux with the upgraded kernel surprisingly, I thought I was back at the beginning again ... shows you how often I have done that before ... never :-)

So, before doing anything else, I thought it would be wise to check a few things and also understand why I got the problem booting into the new kernel and what to do to repair everything.

I found out my ethernet interface is missing, an ifconfig -a just shows my loopback, which is possibly unfortunate. There is no associated hostname file in /etc anymore. I think this means I will have to configure the kernel which I have also not done before, so it could be interesting, which is why I say it is _possibly_ unfortunate :-)

Checking the kern.log I see this is indeed a SPARC4 sun4m which clears up an earlier question: -

ARCH: SUN4M

TYPE: SPARCstation 4

:-)

I also see that it has seen my ethernet interface as it states the MAC in the log. Checking the syslog I see only the following: -

Ethernet address: <MAC>

Whereas I used to see the below entries when it worked ok: -

Ethernet address: <MAC>

eth0: LANCE <MAC>

eth0: using auto-carrier-detection.

eth0: Carrier Lost, trying TPE

As this was a completely basic system with hardly any software installed (wanted to upgrade it first) there is not too much to check, I can create, edit and remove files. It would be good to get to a system which needs no interaction on a reboot and can communicate with other devices though :-) Can anyone help out?

Thanks again for your time all.

Cheers,

Steve

RE: Debian on Sparc 4 - woody to sarge - some progress