Bad Magic Number

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

I recently got ahold of some Sun Sparc (-10 & -20) machines and want to try Gentoo's sparc release. I have downloaded minimul and full release sparc ISO's and burned them with Nero. I followed the install notes. I have used machines at home and work to do this. All CDs fail to boot with BAD MAGIC NUMBER IN DISK LABEL as the reason.

I can boot Solaris-9 disks from Sun.

hardave · Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 2:23 am Post subject:

For older Sun cd drives, don't burn the disks faster than 4x, and don't use cd-rw, use cd-r. If you still have problems booting off of your cdroms, you could also netboot your box.

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

I tried again. I downloaded Gentoo ISOs and went to Sun and got their Solaris-9 (free) ISOs. The disks for both were done under identical conditions. My Sparc-20 rejected the Gentoo at boot with the "Bad magic number at disk label" message. I then loaded the Solaris disks I made...with no incident. The Sparc is running fine under Solaris-9.

The downloads from Gentoo MD5 checked out OK.

Is there something I'm missing? (Besides half my mind.)
-DW

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

You might try using either of the following commands to boot the CDs

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

Here's another clue... The "Bad Magic Number" message is consistant with my Sparc-20. However, one of the Sparc-10s is giving a "SILO Illegal Instruction" message. Here again, same disks and Solaris-9 goes right in.

I tried the boot cdrom:c and boot cdrom:f and got the same message.

Not to confuse the issue, but my 2nd Sparc-10 detects the SCSI CDROM with a probe-scsi...but when accessed (boot cdrom) the scsi bus hangs. (I have 2 Sparc-10s.)

Thanks for your suggestions! I'm not giving up.

GenTimJS · Guru Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 406 Location: NH, USA

this reeks of non-512k-boot-sector problems

make sure your CD-Rom is a sun-compatible 512k boot sector cd-rom. how to check this will varry greatly depending on models, etc. If its not a 512k boot sector cdrom, head over to ebay...
_________________
-Tim Smith

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

My Sparc-20 has a built-in Toshiba.
My Sparc-10 has a matching external Sun/Toshiba.
My other Sparc-10 has a Sun/Sony CD.

I have problems in all instances. The Solaris loaded in two of three machines without any problem. This leads me to believe something is going wrong in my download and burning sequence. Although the Solaris-9 was downloaded and burned in the same basic way. None of the Sparcs are online. I have to use a pee-cee to ftp the images. My ISP mirrors Gentoo so the transfer shouldn't be a problem. I burned both Solaris and Gentoo with Nero. ??? Hmmm, Solaris was downloaded with the Sun manager. That would be the only difference I can think of.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

I was trying the Live CD boot. I got the following message.

SILO Version 1.4.4
Illegal Instruction

If I boot a stage disk I get the Bad Magic Number.

The two Sparc machines I'm using have Solaris-9 and read .jpg and other files off of CDs. The problem seems to be centered around booting Linux disks.

Dwayne Walker · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2004 Posts: 10 Location: Minnesota

Well I think I'll move on. I got the Live CDs to boot.

There may be something to how you download the files to a PC before burning the disks. Some have written of issues where passing through a PC corrupts the software. I ended up downloading and burning until I got it to work. It seemed the Sun Download Manager...which I successfully downloaded Solaris with...works well elsewhere.

Thanks for your suggestions.