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[solved] Silo stuck at boot printing only SI
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bender86
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Joined: 18 Mar 2005
Posts: 484

PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 5:04 pm    Post subject: [solved] Silo stuck at boot printing only SI Reply with quote

I updated my system, and now I cannot make it boot any more.
Silo get stuck at boot after printing its first two letters SI.
From what I can gather from old documentation, it means that it cannot load one of its stages (I guess the third one).

I am not sure how I got into this situation, because Silo was not one of the updated packages.
According to my emerge.log the last time it was emerged was more than six months ago.

Anyway, I tried to netboot and chroot to run silo again, but the only tftpboot images I could find on the mirrors are more than 10 years old.
When I try to chroot into my system I get an error "Kernel too old".

I also tried running silo without chrooting, but it complains about glibc being too old (obviously).
I am not sure if I could make that work using some LD_LIBRARY_PATH magic, but I did not make it so far.

Is there anywhere a tftboot with a recent kernel?
Do you have any advice?


Last edited by bender86 on Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
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bender86
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Joined: 18 Mar 2005
Posts: 484

PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A bit sad to see the community so quiet, but I guess sparc is a dying architecture :(

Anyway, I did manage to recover, and this is how I did it.
Maybe it will help someone else in the future (maybe even myself again, something something XKCD 979 :D ).

I downloaded the latest Debian ISO image from here: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/10.0/sparc64/iso-cd/
I installed QEMU with support for sparc and sparc64 architectures.
Code:
env QEMU_SOFTMMU_TARGETS="sparc sparc64" emerge qemu

I attached the harddrive of the broken installation to my laptop through USB.
I ran QEMU passing the raw device (/dev/sda) as disk, booting from the Debian cdrom.
Code:

qemu-system-sparc64 --machine sun4u,accel=tcg,usb=off -m 512 \
    -smp 1,sockets=1,cores=1,threads=1 \
    -rtc base=utc -no-reboot -no-shutdown \
    -boot strict=on \
    -drive file=/dev/sda,if=ide,format=raw \
    -drive file=debian-10.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso,format=raw,if=ide,bus=1,unit=0,media=cdrom,readonly=on \
    -netdev user,id=n1 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,bus=pciB,netdev=n1 \
    -boot d -serial pty -nographic

On another terminal I attached to the serial output
Code:
cu -l /dev/pts/2
(or whatever number QEMU tells you to) and waited until the Debian installer finished loading.

At that point, I switched to a console inside the emulated machine (ctrl+a+n), mounted the partitions (mount -t ext3 /dev/sda /mnt, specifying the filesystem explicitly, otherwise it failed with a cryptic "file not found" error), mounted the pseudo filesystems (mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev && mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys && mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc), and chrooted (chroot /mnt /bin/bash).

Inside the chroot, I updated the environment (env-update), and ran silo (silo -C /etc/silo.conf).

Then I quit the chroot, unmounted everything, turned off the emulated machine, detached the disk, reattached it to the physical machine, and turned this one on...

... to be greeted by a "kernel not found" error by silo :D

But that was unrelated, I did try to change /etc/silo.conf in order to solve the original problem, and I must have made some syntax error.
Anyway, that was an easy fix, and I could even do it from the ancient Gentoo's tftpboot image.

So, lo and behold, in all its glory:

Code:
bender86@netra ~ $ neofetch
         -/oyddmdhs+:.                bender86@netra
     -odNMMMMMMMMNNmhy+-`             ----------------------------------
   -yNMMMMMMMMMMMNNNmmdhy+-           OS: Gentoo/Linux sparc64
 `omMMMMMMMMMMMMNmdmmmmddhhy/`        Host: SUNW,375-3015
 omMMMMMMMMMMMNhhyyyohmdddhhhdo`      Kernel: 5.10.27-gentoo
.ydMMMMMMMMMMdhs++so/smdddhhhhdm+`    Uptime: 11 hours, 9 mins
 oyhdmNMMMMMMMNdyooydmddddhhhhyhNd.   Packages: 360 (emerge)
  :oyhhdNNMMMMMMMNNNmmdddhhhhhyymMh   Shell: bash 5.1.8
    .:+sydNMMMMMNNNmmmdddhhhhhhmMmy   Terminal: /dev/pts/0
       /mMMMMMMNNNmmmdddhhhhhmMNhs:   CPU: TI UltraSparc IIe (Hummingbird) (0)
    `oNMMMMMMMNNNmmmddddhhdmMNhs+`    Memory: 129MiB / 485MiB
  `sNMMMMMMMMNNNmmmdddddmNMmhs/.
 /NMMMMMMMMNNNNmmmdddmNMNdso:`
+MMMMMMMNNNNNmmmmdmNMNdso/-
yMMNNNNNNNmmmmmNNMmhs+/-`
/hMMNNNNNNNNMNdhs++/-`
`/ohdmmddhys+++/:.`
  `-//////:--.
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