Re: Overwritten ALOM runtime image during Debian Net install - HELP :(

[RR <ranjtech@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:08 PM, RR <ranjtech@gmail.com> wrote:

 

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 5:55 PM, Richard Mortimer <richm@oldelvet.org.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/2011 17:55, RR wrote:

Hi All,

We think we have ruined the image that comes with the SC or something
but we were trying to install Debian Linux on this V240. On the OBP we typed

/ok boot new linux root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=10.1.3.1:/mnt/iso

ip=10.1.3.11:10.1.3.1:10.1.3.254:255.255.255.0:SPARC01/

Try adding one of the following to your boot commandline.

console=ttyS0,19200
or
console=ttyS0,9600
or
console=ttyS0,115200

 

Hi Richard.

Thanks for the response. The problem is we have no clue where to actually type ANYTHING anymore as we never get to a point to be able to type anything. Note that ALL of this garbage appears before we can even get into the ALOM, so we're not even at the OBP to be able to give the machine any instructions re: serial port settings etc. We believe that upgrading the ALOM version could have been our salvation but even before this had happened, we'd spent time looking for the newer ALOM version but Oracle has now made all these things available ONLY to people with a support contract. These used to be freely available through sunsolve before. We've created a ticket in the Oracle support forums but no response so far :(

 

Richard, OMG!! You're a Genius!! So, we'd changed the Serial port settings at the OBP to 19,200 but had seen NO change to anything. Typically, a mismatch of console port settings, just makes the console non-responsive till you get the settings at both end (the PC console port OR a Serial/Console Server) the same. However, since we kept seeing the effect of key presses on the screen (even though it was all garbage) we thought the change didn't do anything. Anyhow, just to test your theory, we figured, OK, so we did change the ttysa settings a while ago, let us try and change the client side settings too again and see if that does anything and Voila!! We have clear text on the screen again!! OMG, we spent4-5 hrs on trying to figure this out!!

 

Thank you thank you thank you!

 

 

/Loading the runtime image... ¡¼å!ØÖ/
/½ç/
/Gûb/

This looks to me like the serial port settings that the kernel is using are wrong. I don't remember what speed the ALOM uses for the serial port but it is probably one of 19200, 9600 or 115200 as above.

 

 

It uses 9,600 by default. But we'd tried changing it to 19,200 but it didn't make any difference.

 

 

Its a long time since I used a V240 so you may have to play around to find the right settings.
The settings are documented in Documentation/serial-console.txt in the Linux kernel sources. See
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/serial-console.txt;h=9a7bc8b3f479b2b82dbfa1056df060366dbafdec;hb=HEAD

Regards

Richard