Installing Debian on Ultrasparc III machines

[Bernd Zeimetz <bernd@bzed.de>]

Hi,

(regarding Debian on US III machines: please do not forget to read teh
WARNING part at the end)

as the current installer doesn't support US III CPUs obviously (as they
seem to need SMP support), I came up with a "hack" to install Debian.
When I decided to build an installer with a very recent kernel I gave
2.6.23-rc4-SMP a try and it worked. Unfortunately the package which
creates the kernel module udebs didn't work properly with the 2.6.23-rc4
kernel package, so I've kiced it into working by just disabling the
failing stuff - of course, this resulted in a number of broken udebs.

http://bzed.de/files/d-i-veryexperimental.tar.gz

contains the following files/directories:

* boot.img: a debian/etch netboot installer with a 2.6.23-rc4 SMP
kernel. Boot it in expert mode, configure your network, install the ssh
client (and probably the ssh netinstall stuff, so you can continue to
install using ssh instead of the serial console). Enter the shell and
use scp to copy the
* 2.6.23-rc4-sparc64-smp directory into /lib/modules of your installer.
The installer should be able to find your harddisks and controllers
afterwards. If you need additional firmware like for the qla2xxx
controllers (which are used in v880/v890 and other machines), download
the firmware from ftp://ftp.qlogic.com/outgoing/linux/firmware/ and drop
it in /lib/firmware. modprobe -r the module and modprobe it again. Same
things should work for other firmware blobs.

* linux-image-2.6.22-2-sparc64-smp_2.6.22-4+farm1_sparc.deb (together
with linux-headers-2.6.22-2-sparc64-smp_2.6.22-4+farm1_sparc.deb) is a
kernel which works well - at least on out US III machine. We've applied
179c85ea53bef807621f335767e41e23f86f01df to make sure that the system
doesn't create unkillable processes anymore if you use the libc6 from
_lenny_. Please read the following

WARNING: using the libc6 from Etch on an US III machine results in a
freeze (badly, as in not reacting to stop+a/break) of your system if you
do things like using aptitude after becoming root by the use of su/sudo.
This is not that bad with the libc6 from testing, but this is definitely
NOT fixed. Take a look into
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=433187 for details, and
provide any useful informations please.


Hope that helps,

Bernd

-- 
Bernd Zeimetz
<bernd@bzed.de>                         <http://bzed.de/>