Issues when installing on older sparc boxes
OK this is my first attempt to use a wiki so please don't complain too much....
This page details the issues I have found when trying to use sarge installer on a sparc server 20 machine, these issues may only effect older boxes; others may effect all machines.
Beta4 business card iso
- Just does not work. Openboot shows the boot cdrom line and hangs there
Nightly build (may 07)
The suggested method of network install ?[DebianInstallerBootpTFTP] does not work with sparc server20's because dhcp isn't supported in openboot for these boxes.
- And ultra 5s with their original Openboot
- ARP/RARP network install works, but you need to pass a lot of parameters.
The working openboot command is :
boot net root=/dev/rd/0 rw devfs=mount
- Actually it seems to work without these boot params
- Partitioning
- No facility (or recomendation) to create the 'whole disk' partition.
- Older sparc machines require that there is a 'whole disk' partition in order to boot
- Workaround - Partition the disk using fdisk from a woody install as fdisk is not in the installer
Or man parted?
- No facility (or recomendation) to create the 'whole disk' partition.
- Kernel does not support LVM
- Bug / Niggaling Issue platform independant
- Whilst installing base packages, if the link is lost or the connection times out then the installer starts at the begining again (not the begining of the file in question but the beginning of the download/validate process)
- smp kernel doesn't work. reverted to single processor version