Debian on Sparc

This page is supposed to help in tracking various Sparc-related issues, including current critical bugs (with relevant links and work arounds), installer issues and the like.

Current status of the latest kernel-images on Sparc: ?SparcKernelStatus

Installation notes for various machines and methods: SparcInstallationNotes

Running Sarge on sun4c machines: ?SparcSun4c

Current open problems for the port:

Netboot images based on 2.6 kernels do not work on sparc32

It appears that during the network boot of 2.6 kernel on sparc32 the initrd image is not copied to its proper location correctly and its mounting fails. If a 2.6 kernel is installed on a working sparc32 machine, it appears to work fine.

CMD64x/ALI IDE drivers

These drivers appear not to function properly with 2.4 kernels. When it is compiled as a module, it breaks the boot. When compiled in, it seems to work, but still issues some error messages during boot (about not being able to read the partition table).

Debugging progress: I have now come up with kernel config which contains all IDE stuff as modules, and appears to work (confirmed by two people on ["SB100"]/150). As it is ABI-breaking, it will most probably not make it into final d-i for Sarge. We are in the process of building and unofficial netinst CD with a fixed kernel. (JurijSmakov).

SILO/kernel hang

There is a bug either in kernel or SILO, which, when tripped, prevents the machines from booting. Symptoms: kernel hangs or machine returns to the PROM 'ok' prompt immediately after messages Remapping the kernel... FP Disabled. There is an old RC bug [http://bugs.debian.org/267428 #267428]. Common workarounds are to use older version of SILO (1.2.5 version from woody), or to build the new SILO with gcc-2.95 instead of the current compiler. This does not, however, eliminate the problem in all cases, as demonstrated in [http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00000.html this message]. The message about remapping the kernel really comes from the kernel, so it might be a kernel problem after all.

One possible reason for that is that the floating-point instruction is encountered somewhere in the execution path of the inherit_prom_mappings() function. I have [http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00026.html asked ] for more debugging information.

Keyboard problems with XFree86 Sarge

Currently the keymap for ["XFree86"] does not work (13/03/05). The work around for this is simply to remove three semi colons as described [here http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00085.html]. This error has been fixed in the latest version of ["XFree86"] which is in Testing.

Some users have reported that removing Xkbd rules from the ["XF86config"]-4 file in /etc/X11 fixes the error, but this does not work on my Ultra 10s.

Support for sun4c machines, see also SparcSun4c

The sun4c architecture lacks a couple of important instructions (unsigned multiply and unsigned divide are probably the most important) so if everything is compiled for sun4c machines (gcc -v7) it's a major performance hit on newer platforms. Support was begun to be phased out in woody (3.0). This post http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00152.html is a good summary of the issues / status.

Support for UPA graphics cards on ultrasparc machines with onboard graphics

Some ultrasparc machines (eg. Ultra 10) have both onboard graphics and a UPA slot which can hold a graphics card (eg. Creator 3D). The default debian kernel/initrd contains all the graphics drivers which are in the linux kernel. This may result in the prom using a different graphics card for the console then the linux kernel. Worse, the graphics card chosen by linux for the console display may not have been initialized by the prom, which may cause the card to output a wrong video signal or no video signal at all. A workaround for this problem is to disable the onboard graphics in the prom if an UPA graphics card is installed. This can be done as follows :

1) Enter the prom (eg. by pressing stop-A)

2) Enter the following commands at the ok prompt :

ok nvedit

 0: probe-all install-console banner
 1: " /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/SUNW,m64B@2" $delete-device drop
 2: ^C (Type control-C)

ok nvstore

ok setenv use-nvramrc? true

 use-nvramrc? =        true

ok reset-all

3) Note that there might be 'devalias ...' lines in the nvramrc already. Just keep them in by pressing enter.


Resolved issues

Keyboard problems on sparc32

Keyboard is non-functional (wrong keymap) when booting the DebianInstaller on sparc32 machines. [http://bugs.debian.org/288140 Bug #288140] has been filed. Works fine with 2.6 kernels, however currently 2.6 is available on netboot images only.

Followup with the bug analysis and a proposed solution (disabling the CONFIG_PCI option in kernel) is posted to the bug. Looks like [http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2005/01/msg00022.html there are] some pretty exotic sparc32 machines out there, which have a PCI bus, but they do not seem to be supported by stock Debian kernel anyway.

Workaround: it appears that you can use the backslash key as the Enter to get to the keyboard layout selection screen and choose "Sun" there, after it everything works as expected. Also, the serial console installations are not affected by this problem. Note that the netboot images linked from the bug trail boot up with correct keyboard but fail later since the modules in the archive are no longer compatible with the kernel used.

Update: this problem has been resolved in debian-installer ["RC3"].