Re: New test kernel - second attempt
Hello,
On Fri, 2025-09-19 at 13:10 +0200, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> "strong" of my new setup I went bold testing and also exploited one more
> time the Sun Fire which was "install donor" for this installation before
> putting back its solaris disks and back in original state.
OK.
> I see this on the V120
> [ 2.200440] rtc-m48t59 rtc-m48t59.0: hctosys: unable to read the
> hardware clock
No idea, needs to be investigated.
> then the serial console looks a bit garbage, seems terminal types don't
> work well after apt updates! yet it is standard vt102 or ANSI through
> minicom as I always used :(
> I am able to luckily login via ssh. So machine is "alive". Just for
> double-check I rebooted the 6.16 kernel and it still spits out crap. I
> think it is color codes that corrupt something.
>
> Sun Fire V120 (1x UltraSparc IIe )
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> debian-sparc64 6.16.7+deb14-sparc64 #1 Debian 6.16.7-1 (2025-09-11)
> sparc64 GNU/Linux : boots fine
This is an unpatched kernel, so not really relevant.
> debian-sparc64 6.17.0-rc5+ #1 SMP Fri Sep 12 20:37:32 UTC 2025 sparc64
> GNU/Linux : boots fine
This is the patched kernel, this needs to be tested.
> After several boots and restarts, eventually I got a crash on a "warm
> restart"...
>
>
> on Ultra 2:
> GRUB Loading kernel.... and hangs there.
Nothing to do with the kernel.
> I tried a set-defaults since the nvram chip is flakey until i fix it or
> a replacement comes, but nothing.
> Coherent with CDROM boot?
>
> hangs here....
>
>
> on Ultra 1:
> GRUB Loading kernel.... and hangs there.
> This one has a good nvram chip. So it appears that the old Ultras don't
> like GRUB? nor from CD nor from the installed system
The kernel image could be too big. Try stripping it with "strip vmlinux-6.17.0-rc5+"
before rebooting.
> Could the GRUB version be "tailored" to the Fire 120 and not work on
> previous systems?
No. GRUB has simply never been really tested on these old machines, I think.
> As a 100% re-check I put in the solaris hard disk and it boots.. until
> it fails to fsck extra partition... I lost a disk. Still enough to prove
> the system is functional!
>
> So... not a shiny future right now for Linux on the old Ultras
You could try setting up SILO on these machines.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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