Debian on Ultra (egcs64 announce and repost of article)

[Steve Dunham <dunham@cse.msu.edu>]

Ok, my original message is below.  There also is a binary for the
Mach64 X server at the location mentioned in the message - I also have
a Xsun24 binary if anybody is trying to install on a SBUS machine with
a creator board.  The message basically contains instructions for
those who can't wait a few weeks for a more nicely packaged version.

I just uploaded the "egcs64" package to incoming.  

In addition to this, you will need a different version binutils -- it
must be compiled with egcc, and "--enable-targets=sparc64-linux" added
to the configure line.  I also added two patches from UltraPenguin - I
don't know if they are necessary, but they don't hurt.  The binutils
that I have generate sparc32 and sparc64 objects (defaults to sparc32,
of course).

I'll put more info up in a web page next weekend.


Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu

Subject: I've installed the latest sparc32 Debian on an Ultra5.
>From: Steve Dunham <dunham@cps.msu.edu>
Date: 28 Nov 1998 15:05:12 -0500
Message-ID: <m9b7lwfmvlz.fsf_-_@fatneck.cps.msu.edu>


"Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@efis.ucr.ac.cr> writes:

> On Wed, Nov 25, 1998 at 03:58:36PM -0500, Steve Dunham wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone tried this stuff on an Ultra?  Does it need any dynamic
> > loader patches or will an Ultra work out of the box with a special
> > kernel.  If the latter is true, then we should provide either a
> > seperate tftpboot image and floppy set for the Ultra, or a combined
> > "TILO" image and seperate floppy set.

>  I'm going to... today hopefully. I was going to ask if that was possible
>  but I said "the heck with it, let's give it a try". I fact, I was wondering
>  why the ultralinux port is based on ultrapenguin and not the Debian Sparc
>  port.

Well, to get you started, go to:

  http://www.cse.msu.edu/~dunham/debian/sparc/

Get

  tiloboot.debian

    It is a TILO tftpboot image with the 2.1.126 kernels from
    UltraPenguin and the root.bin from Debian.  It supports both
    UltraSparc (sun4u) and sparc32 (sun4[cdm]) machines.

  base_sid.tgz

    You need this becase the current base package contains an older
    libc6 which doesn't play well with 2.1.x kernels.  This has all of
    the packages updated and includes "apt".

  vmlinux64-2.1.126.gz

    You need to install this manually (and rerun silo) after the base
    is installed.

  modules64.tgz

    These are the modules for the above kernel.  Untar (zcat|star) into
    /target.

  modutils64.tgz

    These are the 64bit modutils.  They complain if they are not named
    /sbin/foo (rather than /sbin/foo64), so you probably want to rename 
    them.  Delete /target/sbin/rmmod and untar this in the root of
    /target.

Unfortunately, the is no HME support in the kernel, and the floppy
doesn't work on Ultra5 machines, so I added "sunhme.o", "3c59x.o" and
"sunqe.o" to the root directory of the ramdisk.  You will need to load
the appropriate module by hand.  (The Ultrapenguin insmod and insmod64
have been installed on the ramdisk.)


If we want Ultra support in Debian, we can make "silo.conf" look like:

  root=/dev/sda1
  timeout= 10
  image[sun4u]=/boot/vmlinux64-2.1.126
      label=linux
  image[sun4c,sun4d,sun4m]=/boot/vmlinux32-2.1.126
      label=linux

and it will automatically use the right kernel.


So we are really close to Ultra support in the sparc32 version of
slink.  We would only need to adapt our tftpboot image, add the
UltraPenguin version of modutils, add sparc64 kernels, and add the
tools for building sparc64 kernels.  (We also should change the
sparc32 "nm" so it recognises sparc64 - needed for "maketilo".)


Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu