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idiot
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 4:35 am    Post subject: bonus question: Reply with quote

While struggling to get silo working on my ultra10 I came across something interesting which I don't entirely understand. My machine was setup with the cdrom on primary master (don't ask, I inherited it that way) but after installing gentoo it would never recognize a disk label on the HD even though the drive has a good disk label. As a last ditch effort before pulling my hair out I came up with trying the HD on primary master and with it in that config 'boot disk' is rewarded with a SILO prompt! woo-hoo! Problem solved, or so I thought!

The gotcha is that now with the CD on secondary/master it won't do a "boot cdrom" to CD's that it was able to boot from while the CD was on primary master. It comes up complaining about disk labels, or magic numbers. Even though we're talking the same CD’s that I’ve been able to boot from! A quick swap of the cables moving the CD back to primary and now the CD boots and the HD again gives disk label errors. Some testing with slaving one of the drives and the same thing the primary master works, and nothing else does.

In all of the configs a probe-ide from the OK shows me what I expect to see. But the strange thing is that a show-disks is showing me what seems like the HD and the CD with identical settings??? Where it gets wierd is when I pull the cables from the HD or CD and do another show-disks I get the same stuff. My Sun knowledge is somewhat limited, but is there a way to force the "show-disks" to refresh it's information?

I think my problem is that somehow the machine thinks the HD and CD are in the same location even though the probe-ide shows that they aren't. It's not like I can just nvalias my way out of it because the cd and hd both have the same location under 'show-disks' It's strange, and I don't understand. But at least my off the wall attempt to solve my silo issue seems to have worked. Another neat thing is that now with the HD on pri/master I can mount my partitions through /dev/hdaX instead of the /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target0/lun0/partX that I was forced to do while it was on sec/master.

Any ideas on clearing up the show-disks stuff? I've googled and haven't come up with anything yet.
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Luud
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry, can't give you the answer.

But I can feel with you. I have the same with a scsi cdrom. It MUST be SCSI ID 6 to be able to boot with it.

You should be able to set it up for the sparc somewhere, but I don't know how.

Cheers
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Luud
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 1:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,

Found some more info (just because I'm curious):

Ultra Linux FAQ

Code:
5. How can I boot directly from the floppy/CD-ROM/Tape Drive ?

At the boot prompt (ok) you can type the command boot, followed by the device that you want to boot from. Examples:

   ok boot floppy    Boot from the floppy disk
   ok boot fd(0,0,0) Boot from the floppy disk
   ok boot cdrom     Boot from the CD-ROM
   ok boot sd(0,6,2) Boot from the CD-ROM
   ok boot tape      Boot from the tape device
   ok boot sd(0,4,0) Boot from the tape device
   ok boot disk      Boot from the hard drive
   ok boot disk2     Boot from the hard drive with SCSI ID: 2
   ok boot sd(0,2,0) Boot from the hard drive with SCSI ID: 2
   ok boot sd(0,1,3) Boot from the 4th partition of SCSI ID: 1

Some older proms do not understand some of the "short" device aliases (i.e. cdrom), and you will need to use the longer explicit form.


and

Code:
7. How can I set it to automatically boot from a different device ?

At the boot prompt (ok) you can type:


   ok setenv boot-from disk2     to boot from SCSI ID: 2 by default
   ok setenv boot-from sd(0,2,0) to boot from SCSI ID: 2 by default
   ok setenv boot-from disk3:a   to boot from SCSI ID: 3 partition 0 or a



Also, see here for some more information about openBoot: http://docs.sun.com/db?q=openboot+command+reference&p=

OpenBoot 2.x Command Reference Manual (pdf, http)
OpenBoot 3.x Command Reference Manual (pdf, http)

Cheers
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idiot
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 8:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for looking! Unfortunately I found that same FAQ and it's not really relevant to my problem. I've been able to point it to the right device to boot, but my issue is that it only ever successfully boots from what's located on master/primary... I can tell it to try booting from the CD, and the cd light comes on like it's trying to do it but I'm always getting a disk label, or magic number error. The same was true while the HD wasn't on the primary channel.

I've not come across the solution in the Openboot manual's, or any of the sun sites yet.
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Mark Clegg
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PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2004 7:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You need to edit the nvram to tell OBP that the cdrom is now in a different place.

Can't remember the syntax but something like help nvram at the ok prompt will help.
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idiot
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PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2004 11:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Found the solution:

I updated OBM from 3.15 to 3.31 and slaved the CD to the HD on the master controller. It seems my secondary controller is toast.

For those in similar situations needing to set nvram to point to pri/slave for a cdrom the following works:
ok nvalias cdrom /pic@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@1,0:f
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Mark Clegg
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2004 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd try to avoid putting the CD and Hard drive on the same controller if you can.

The way I understand IDE is that the bus runs at the speed of the slowest of the two devices connected. SO what you're effectively doing is limiting the maximum data rate of your hard disk to that of your CD player... And Sun IDE controllers aren't renowned for being fast in the first place....
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idiot
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2004 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mark Clegg wrote:
I'd try to avoid putting the CD and Hard drive on the same controller if you can.

The way I understand IDE is that the bus runs at the speed of the slowest of the two devices connected. SO what you're effectively doing is limiting the maximum data rate of your hard disk to that of your CD player... And Sun IDE controllers aren't renowned for being fast in the first place....

I know, and I hate doing it but my secondary controller is dead and I have no choice.
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Drunkula
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PostPosted: Fri May 28, 2004 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't it Stop-N on the Sun keyboards that will reset the OBP devaliases?
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Jester20
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PostPosted: Mon May 31, 2004 7:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Drunkula wrote:
Isn't it Stop-N on the Sun keyboards that will reset the OBP devaliases?


Yes, stop-N does a NVRAM reset.
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