Re: fwd: Debian sparc32 on Ultra status report (also status of debian-sparc)
Ward Deng <wdeng@KachinaTech.COM> writes:
> Please contact me with your progress. Our Debian UltraLinux developers
> have decided to go for two-step approach. Rather than working with
> a hybrid RedHat based UltraPenguin system, we'd rather start with a
> Debian counterpart of UltraPenguin which is also 32-bit now. Most
> developers are happy working toward a 64-bit platform from a pure
> 32-bit Debian/sparc system.
The Debian counterpart is essentially here (the system in front of me
is quite usable for day-to-day work, including being integrated into
our Solaris-based NIS/NFS setup). I just need to package it up.
Whats the status on 64-bit userland? Are egcs, glibc and ldso all
working yet? (A non-functioning ld.so is too messy for me to get
involved with ATM...)
BTW, Ultrapenguin now has a broken libc - they added the
register_frame_info bug for Red Hat compatibility - also the
sparc-linux Netscape doesn't run on Debian, probably a libstdc++/glibc
problem - the sparc-sunos one does work. (Maybe if I pull the
libraries from RedHat 5.2 and use a LD_LIBRARY_PATH.)
> I will get an UltraSPARC AXi based system back on Wednesday so I can
> work on installation too.
I'll dig up my original message and post it to this list. It should
get you started.
> I will also help on provide FTP space for your packages. If your
> Ultra-5 does not have enough space or resources to build packages,
> please use our xia01 and xia03.
I have plenty of space on the Ultra5 (the come with 4GB of drive
space). I'd like to put the ftp stuff somewhere other than my web
page, but we do have an ftp server here. Currently, I have a few
things on my web site - just some tenative stuff to get an initial
system installed. (The base.tgz, tftp image, kernel, modutils, and an
X server binary. The kernel and modutils have to be installed
manually). I recently posted instructions to the debian-sparc list.
I didn't put it on master, because there were issues with master's net
connectivity the last time I checked.
Right now, I just have a base.tgz, a tftpboot image, and the
kernel/modutils on the web site. Enough for a knowledgable person
with specific instructions to do an install. (I also put the PCI X
server up there.)
My plan is:
1. Get it running. (Done.)
2. Build the kernel compiling tools and a new kernel. (Done.)
3. Get X running. (Done.)
4. Install and build enough packages to make the system comfortable.
Mostly filling in a few packages missing from sparc. (Done)
5. Make packages the egcs64, binutils, modutils, and kernel from step 2.
6. Make install images, etc.
7. Package the X servers.
The changes to modutils and binutils work on both systems, but
binutils needs to be compiled with egcs, due to a gcc problem. I will
eventually want to merge them in with the main distribution (maybe
after slink).
> I will also help working on a web page to provide recent progress and
> how-tos on Debian installing on Ultras.
I should have something that is fairly easy to get started with within
a few weeks. The latter half of this week will be dedicated to
writing a couple of papers for an independent study that I should have
finished a while ago... Afterwards is christmas vacation, aside from
20 hr/week sysadmin work and relaxing, I'll be working on this. (Cheap
entertainment...)
> I have a question though to Debian/Sparc team. Because one of our
> publically available system, xia02 which was an ancient SPARCstation 1+
> with 16MB RAM, is too slow for any development work, Kachina has
> purchased a SPARCstation LX with 64MB RAM for Debian Project.
Ouch. At the very least we need sparc32 on Ultras so we can compile
stuff in a reasonable amount of time.
> We intended to install it with the latest 32-bit Debian
> system. However, last week I tried, the tftpboot image is still
> dated June. Even worse, most packages were missing so dselect simply
> cannot continue. I knew Eric has come up a new version and I saw
> some new packages have been uploaded. What is the status of the
> 32-bit SPARC Debian distribution? Why is linked in "sid" from
> "potato?"
A new image was recently released. All of the stuff is either in
slink or sid. I usually grab both.
> I installed sucessfully from "hamm" in July although I had to use floppies
> together with the tftpboot image booted from net.
hamm never worked on the Sparc20 on my desk (the kernel didn't like my
machine - RedHat/Ultrapenguin ran fine). The newer stuff does run.
The SS20 has two video cards and a newer PROM, either could have been
the cause of the problem.
(Some of the files are at:
http://www.cse.msu.edu/~dunham/debian/sparc
but there are no instructions there yet. One big caveat: the boot
ramdisk has a loadable module for sunhme.o which must be manually
loaded. I'll put newer, better ones up after I get everything packaged.)
Later,
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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