Gentoo Network install?

pixie · Guru Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 305

I have a Sun Sparcstation 4 (110mhz 32mb mem 1GB hd) not doing much. It has no floppy drive or CD-Rom. Is there any way I can easily install Gentoo on it? Solaris 2.6 is rather out of date and limiting.

It will most likely just do DNS but I would much prefer Gentoo to Solaris, which I am having trouble getting to grips with. I can't even seem to get the damned thing working on my network under Solaris 2.6. It would be much cleaner to have both my server boxes running Gentoo really though.

I am considering selling it on eBay and seeing about another old Pentium 2 box. If I can get Gentoo on it I am set and I can keep it.

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

Hiya Pixie,

Currently, Gentoo doesn't have any netboot images (on the ToDo list) but you can/should be able to use the debian tftpboot image located at http://auric.debian.org/~bcollins/disks-sparc/3.0.23-2002-10-05/sun4cdm/tftpboot.img to do your installation with.

If you need help or have problems with net booting or installation, feel free to ask.

pixie · Guru Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 305

Thanks a lot. I shall give it a go. I am assuming once I am started that apart from bootloaders and a few other things the Sparc install should be similar to x86 and ppc.

reesm · n00b Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 39 Location: AB, Canada

i used the debian netboot images and they worked great on my sunblade 100. you should have no problem with them. the only trick is you might need to repack the stage tarballs from *.tar.bz2 -> *.tar.gz using an existing system. the debian netboot disks that i used didn't have bunzip2 on them.

cheers, and good luck!

pixie · Guru Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 305

Thanks for the tip. Much appreciated.

I shall have to remember all this for when I get time to get the Sparc box sorted out.