Re: Installation Problem on Sun Fire V240
From: Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 15:11:24 -0400
> So SILO from hd works, but SILO from cd doesn't? I can't think of anything
> that is different when booting from CD other than the first stage
> bootloader (which is pretty trivial).
>
> The only thing could could possibly be the issue is something to do with
> initrd. Maybe some bug haas crept in, maybe it's a memory mapping issue
> particular to the III/IIIi's. Could be that SILO is writing the initrd
> over top of the kernel or writing the value into the wrong place in the
> kernel.
>
> Quick test of this would be to see if you could boot from CD with no
> initrd and mounting a hd for root.
Ben, one thing I've been considering a lot lately while reading
these reports is a somehow corrupted sign extension when calling
into the OBP.
SILO is, for better or for worse, a 32-bit Sparc binary. However,
we go into 64-bit mode when we jump into the firmware.
If the upper 32-bits of some parameter we pass in has garbage in
it, we'll totally die in the firmware.
It's something to consider.
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