Roadblock 2.4 vs 2.6 kernel

[iamchris]

I'm still hacking away at trying to get a B100s blade to run gentoo. I can boot with the gentoo-sparc64-2005.0-20050717.tftpboot boot image.

Here's what I've done so far: I removed the disk drive from the blade, hooked it up to an x86 computer running gentoo, unpacked the sparc64 stage3 tarball, portage bootstrap, and 2.6.18 kernel sources to the Sun Disklabel-ed disk drive (thank you to Plugin_baby for that kick in the right direction)

When I stick it back into the B100s, and boot with the tftpboot image, I can't chroot to the partitions with the stage3 tarball on them because of the kernel being a different version, and all binaries on the stage3 tarball being built with a different version of glibc. I can't build a kernel until I get a sparc64 machine to boot. (cross-compiling is still a big mystery to me)

I think my only way out, without pulling the drive out of the blade again, is to find a tftpboot that boots a 2.6 kernel and has a more recent version of glibc libraries.

I'll work toward grabbing a kernel off of the livecd while I wait for replies from kind sparc gurus, and see where that gets me.

If anyone has a new boot image available, I would be indebted to you for a kind pointer.

[Ferris]

1. There are kernel configs for a B100 at http://dev.gentoo.org/~weeve/configs/kernel_configs/ (the one dated 25 Sept. 2006 is a B100 config for 2.6.17);
2. In http://dev.gentoo.org/~weeve/tftpboot/images/ check the tftpboot image for profile 2006.0 --- I haven't verified, but that is likely a kernel-2.6 version;
3. If you have access to IRC freenode, you can join #gentoo-sparc and ask your question there. Both Weeve and gustavoz will have more current information than I do.

Hope this helps;
Regards,

[iamchris]

Thank you for your reply. I really do appreciate the pointers.

The tftpboot image for profile 2006.0 seems to be a sparc32 kernel, which the B100s won't boot. It tells me I need a sparc64 kernel. Like most things, my inexperience may be the prohibiting factor here. Is there a proper way to boot a sparc32 kernel on a 64bit Sparc?

ok boot net
Boot device: /pci@1f,0/network@a File and args:
1000 Mbps FDXLink up
Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
344800
Server IP address: 10.0.0.32
Client IP address: 10.0.0.34

On sun4u you have to use UltraLinux (64bit) kernel
and not a 32bit sun4[cdem] version

Program terminated
ok

Confusingly enough, the Blade 100 is different than the B100s, which is an actual blade (1"x14"x4" ... very compact), which is inserted into a B1600 blade chassis. There may be some similarities between the two devices. I have never seen a Blade 100, so I can't make that determination.

I will jump on to freenode and re-ask my question. Thank you /very/ much for pointing me to that resource.

CG