[clug] Sparc 5 and Debian

[Ian Matters]

Hi Antti.

I have a Sparcstation 4 running Debian/SPARC with a 2.2 kernel, so the
situation may be different to yours.  I had problems getting Silo to
install correctly and as a result I reconfigued the disk layout so that
the / partition was not too big and was located on /dev/sda1.  Some of
my configuration settings follow.

Cheers, Ian Matters
<ian at iristech.com.au>
---
hotel:~# cat /etc/silo.conf
partition=1
root=/dev/sda1
timeout=100
image=1/vmlinuz
label=linux
read-only
---
hotel:~# fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda (Sun disk label): 4 heads, 474 sectors, 18902 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1896 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1             0      1080   1023840   83  Linux native
/dev/sda2  u       1080      1356    261648   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3             0     18902  17919096    5  Whole disk
/dev/sda4          1356      3568   2096976   83  Linux native
/dev/sda5          3568      5780   2096976   83  Linux native
/dev/sda6          5780     10200   4190160   83  Linux native
/dev/sda7         10200     18902   8249496   83  Linux native

Command (m for help):
---
hotel:~# cat /etc/silo.conf
partition=1
root=/dev/sda1
timeout=100
image=1/vmlinuz
label=linux
read-only
---
sda1 -> /
sda4 -> /usr
sda5 -> /var
sda6 -> /home
sda7 -> /srv
---
On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 10:50, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Last night I was installing Debian on a Sparc 5 and everything
> works fine up until making the system bootable. At this point
> Debian says it's unable to make the system bootable and that I'll
> need to use a boot floppy (not possible since there's no floppy drive).
> 
> When I shelled out and ran silo manually (silo -C /target/etc/silo.conf)
> I got an error on the second stage boot loader. Since the system previously
> had a Linux install on it, I tried rebooting and got a warning about old, buggy
> PROMs not liking disks larger than 1 Gb.
> 
> Tonight I'll try again with:
>  - First using fdisk to manually tag sda1 as bootable (I'm sure it is, but didn't check)
>  - Creating a small, seperate /boot partition
> 
> I've done network installs many times and not encountered this problem before.
> Can anyone offer a quick answer to what's going on?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Antti
> P.S. The 2.4 rarp stuff is much nicer to use than the 2.2 rarp. :o)
>