Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC

I have installed Debian on my Ultra 1 with a UltraSparc 1 CPU. This is the first time I've ever had any success in getting any linux distro installed over the past 3 years! Wow, did it take a while!

I do have one issue I don't believe is related to the patches.

I can boot to Grub but grub fails to boot.

Can't read disk label.

Can't open disk label package

I'm still looking for a solution to this but haven't found it yet. Any pointers here would be appreciated. I did boot into the rescue CD from Debian and updated GRUB2 and reinstall it. That didn't seem to help. The partition table type on my disk is sun and I do have the sparc64-ieee1275 modules for grub installed.

Once I overcome this grub hurdle is there any process I should run to more thoroughly test this install? Something that would stress test these new patches explicitly? Are there any stats or other info from this system that would be helpful with validating this is working properly now?

On Sat, Aug 30, 2025 at 3:51 PM Dennis Clarke <dclarke@blastwave.org> wrote:

On 8/30/25 03:40, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On Fri, 2025-08-29 at 18:41 -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:
>> I will hunt around and see what I have laying about in a back room.
>> I know I have old Netra X1 stuff and maybe a few other units with very
>> old UltraSPARC processors in them. They will be horrifically slow.
>> The SPARC M7 or M8 will be a unicorn. Heard of only in myth.
>
> While I don't assume you have a SPARC M7-compatible machine, I think
> chances are good you might have a T1 machine. As a bonus, a test on
> an UltraSPARC I or II is very welcome as well.
>
...

> Still, it would be nice to have testing on real machines of these types:
>
> - UltraSPARC I or II

Found one of these units :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_II#UltraSPARC_IIe

Resetting...

Processor Speed = [Speed Jumper = 5] 500 MHz
Baud rate is 9600
8 Data bits, 1 stop bits, no parity (configured from lom)

Firmware CORE Sun Microsystems, Inc.
@(#) core 1.0.18 2002/05/23 18:22
Software Power ON
Verifying NVRAM...Done
Bootmode is 0
MCR0 = 36a0bc04
MCR1 = c0804000
MCR2 = ff0bbbb
MCR3 = 3ff
Ecache Size = 256 KB
Clearing E$ Tags Done
Clearing I/D TLBs Done
Probing memory
Done
MEMBASE=0x60000000
MEMSIZE=0x10000000
Clearing memory...Done
Turning ON MMUs Done
Copy ROM to RAM (154720 bytes) Done
Orig PC=0x1fff0007edc New PC=0xf0f07f34
Processor Speed=500MHz
Looking for Dropin FVM ... found
Decompressing Client Done
Transferring control to Client...
Reset Control: BXIR:0 BPOR:0 SXIR:0 SPOR:1 POR:0
Probing upa at 1f,0 pci
Probing upa at 0,0 SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIe (256 Kb)
Loading Support Packages: kbd-translator
Loading onboard drivers:
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 7 isa dma rtc power SUNW,lomh serial serial
flashprom
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 3 pmu i2c temperature dimm dimm dimm dimm
i2c-nvram idprom motherboard-fru ppm beep fan-control
lomp
Probing Memory Bank #0 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #1 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #2 256 Megabytes
Probing Memory Bank #3 256 Megabytes
ChassisSerialNumber 51592229
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 7
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 3
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device c ethernet
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device 5 ethernet
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device a usb
Probing /pci@1f,0 Device d ide disk cdrom
todm5819 Sun Netra X1 (UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 4.0, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #51592229.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:13:3c:25, Host ID: 83133c25.

This will be horrific in terms of speed but it seems to be a variant of
the UltraSPARC II. They are dirt cheap and on eBay for silly prices.

With luck I can netboot the installer image. Seems to be an IDE bus
inside the thing. Who knows ... maybe an IDE DVD drive will boot.

--
--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken