Re: Netra T1 200 watchdog timeouts

[Mark Morgan Lloyd <markMLl.debian-sparc@telemetry.co.uk>]

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> Jurij Smakov wrote:

> > Looking at the output you see, I have doubts that it has anything to 
> > do with SILO though. SILO prints letters 'S', 'I', 'L' and 'O' 
> > (appearing before the prompt) after it completes execution of 
> > different parts of first-stage loader. As you can see in the code 
> > (first/first.S), printing 'S' is the first thing first-stage loader 
> > does upon startup. The fact that it is not seen in the console output 
> > suggests that even first-stage loader never got to run. The line
> >
> > Boot device: /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@8/disk@0,0:a  File and args:
> >
> > which is normally printed by OBP before control is passed to SILO does 
> > not appear in the watchdog-reset case either, which, again, is a 
> > strong sign that failure happens before SILO has a chance to run.

This is something to do with the type of disc being used, i.e. the exact 
firmware version or similar, rather than the Debian release or the 
version of SILO etc.

I'm using non-Sun SCA discs, badged Compaq but apparently WD. Some work 
OK while others- nominally the same but with visibly different PCB- fail 
the first boot.

This might still be specific to OBP in a Netra T1, both types of disc 
boot first time in an Ultra-1. It affects Lenny, Squeeze and Wheezy, and 
possibly other OSes.

--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]