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rsborn
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 10 Feb 2004
Posts: 105
Location: Webster, NY

PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:15 pm    Post subject: New install on Sparc Ultra 10 newbie observations Reply with quote

I have just completed a basic Gentoo install on an inherited Ultra 10 here at work and thought I would give some initial observations. I have had some Linux experience, even a couple installs on Sun boxes but I had never heard of Gentoo until it was suggested as the platform of choice by a Linux users group here at work.

Install observations:
1. I had originally downloaded a full up Stage 3 cdset because I thought that would be the least painfull but it was unclear to me how to use those CD's to install the packages, I think I essentially just installed everthing from the net except the stage 3 tarball (I never even inserted CD2). I have a relatively fast connection at work so I think I could have saved me a CD download and burn by just downloading the first disc next time.

2. Silo.conf - I think this was just a boneheaded mistake but I thought I would share for any other Newbies trying to install based on the documentation. In the section on silo.conf it gives an example of
image = /boot/vmlinux
which from all observations looks pretty believable until after rebooting and realizing that it can't find the image file. After a couple changes and subsequent reboots, I finally banged my head against the wall hard enought to realize that image = /boot/vmlinux should really be image = vmlinux because the earlier recommended partitioning had me put boot on a separate partition so silo only knows about /vmlinux and nothing about /boot. Stupid I know

3. emerge gnome - How long is this gonna take on a Ultra10? I started it last night before leaving work at 4:30 and it is now 9:10 and it's still going, no hurry I'm just curious.

When the guys at work ask me what this funny looking PC is doing (I work in a primarily windows house) the only analagy I can give them is it's kind of like Windows Update on crack. I further explain by saying it would be like throwing a DOS boot disk in a pc and being able to run a command and walk away for a day and come back and have a fully updated version of windows XP without even having a disc.

Rick
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mrichmon
n00b
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Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 21

PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

On my Ultra 10 (440MHz) X took about 10 hours and gnome took another 14 hours or so after that.

I'm not sure what is going on with your silo setup though.
I followed the recommended partition scheme when I installed in december which resulted in
/dev/hda1 = /boot
/dev/hda2 = swap
/dev/hda3 = whole disk
/dev/hda4 = /

My kernels and my silo.conf file live in /boot and an example silo entry is
image = /boot/kernel-2.4.24

I just find that I keep forgetting to mount /boot before trying to mess with silo. :?
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rsborn
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 10 Feb 2004
Posts: 105
Location: Webster, NY

PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 9:03 pm    Post subject: More trauma Reply with quote

Darnit, the Gnome compile failed because I had not set the USE flag for gtk2. Kind of funny GDM loads now on a reboot but it goes to a failsafe XTerm session. recompiling mozilla now with the proper USE flag now I hope.
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Ferris
Retired Dev
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Joined: 13 Jan 2003
Posts: 426
Location: N. Virginia (USA)

PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Re: /boot on separate partition, and also "image=/boot/vmlinux" works:

Check to see if you don't have a symbolic link in your /boot partition that
came from something like
ln -s . boot

If I recall correctly, the install sets them up that way, doubtless to take
care of this very problem.
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charlesnadeau
Apprentice
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Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 205
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2004 11:10 am    Post subject: Problem with SILO on an UltraSparc 10 Reply with quote

I installed Gentoo on my UltraSparc 10 over the week-end and I still have problem with SILO. When I boot, I get this error message:
Code:

VFS: Cannot open root device "hda4" or (03:04)
Please append a correct "root:" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on (03:04)
 Press L1-A to return to the boot prom


which is quite similar as the one reported here

Here are my partitions:
Code:

Disk /dev/hda (Sun disk label): 16 heads, 63 sectors, 17660 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             0       124     62496   83  Linux native
/dev/hda2  u        125      1117    499968   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda3             0     17660   8900640    5  Whole disk
/dev/hda4          1118     17660   8337168   83  Linux native


Here is my /etc/fstab:
Code:

/dev/hda1      /boot      ext3      noauto,noatime      1 1
/dev/hda4      /      ext3      noatime         0 0
/dev/hda2      none      swap      sw         0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0   /mnt/cdrom   iso9660      noauto,ro      0 0
none         /proc      proc      defaults      0 0
none         /dev/shm   tmpfs      defaults      0 0


And finally my SILO.conf:
Code:

partition = 1
root = /dev/hda4
timeout = 20
image = /boot/V24
label = V24


I tried to boot with SILO using different disks as explained here and none was successful.
In silo.conf I tried both
Code:

image = /boot/V24

and
Code:
image = V24

as per the comments here and none of them allowed me to boot.
I tried to boot by typing "1/V24 root=/dev/hda4" at the SILO prompt as suggested here
Since I am using a seperate partition to boot from, I copied silo.conf to /boot then ran "silo -C" as mentionned here .
I fsck.ext3 my /dev/hda3 partition and there is no errors with it whatsoever.
I compiled ext3 in my kernel (not as a module).
The kernel size is 2.7M.

Now the questions:
What is wrong with my configuration? What should I do? What's the next step?
How important is the fact that my /boot partition starts at cylinder 0 rather than 1? This post says it isn't important. If it has to start at 1, what is the quickest/simplest way to change from 0 to 1?
About a year ago, Blademan mentionned that creating a separate /boot partition wasn't advisable and that the documentation would be modified accordingly. I haven't seen it. Does it mean it isn't exact?

Thanks for your help!

Charles
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