Netbooting Gentoo on Sparc hardware

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kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Sat Mar 26, 2022 5:13 am

I have an old Sun SPARC64 server in my possession and have been a fan of Gentoo for a long time. I want to put Gentoo on this server in my possession but the Gentoo Handbook directions on installing only mentions how to get it running from an ISO image. This server has no optical media and also while it has a bay for some kind of optical device that is empty it is unusual and I cannot find one I can buy that works with this hardware.

I am told from the TLDP SPARC HOWTO that it can boot a kernel over NFS. Here is a screenshot from the guide on doing that...
https://thumbsnap.com/9EQxYvFk - this screenshot is from page 20 of that PDF.

Basically I want to use a command like this on the serial console, as shown in the above PDF and screenshot of it...

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{1} boot net vmlinux nfsroot=192.168.1.32:/tmp

While I am capable of making an NFS server I am not sure where to get the files to put on it so I can boot a live environment to do the Gentoo install. I assume I might be able to extract them from the Gentoo ISO for SPARC and work from that. Obviously in the line above for network booting, I have to provide an uncompressed Linux kernel, but also everything else so that I have something much the same as the LiveCD to work with. From there I should be able to install Gentoo all on my own.

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 2:56 pm

I am necromancing my own thread as I am back to this project.

I used this guide below, mostly, however I am netbooting from Raspberry Pi OS. That detail is mostly irrelevent.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sparc/Netboot/en

I used images from here...

https://distfiles.gentoo.org/experiment ... t/sparc64/

They are very old and the newest is from 2010. This means there are SSL cipher issues, SSH as well, and that it runs a Linux 2.6 kernel. I did however get it to boot, which is nice. It booted into a busybox and has a very limited version of tar, and so I can't seem to extract the stage3 and even try here.

I really need newer PXE roms for Gentoo on Sparc64.

It was still nice to get this far.

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# uname -a
Linux netboot 2.6.31-gentoo-r7 #1 SMP Thu Jan 28 18:07:36 UTC 2010 sparc64 GNU/Linux

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 3:44 pm

kaizushi,

For the stage 3, you can cheat.

Using your everyday driver, the arch is irrelevant, make yourself a ./sparc64 dir somewhere.
Download the stage3 of your choice there.
Now untar it there. You need to do that as root so that -p works.
The stage3 is treated as data.

Copy the now untarred stage3 over the network to your SPARC hardware.

For bonus points add QEMU static-user to ./sparc64 on your random arch and chroot into your sparc stage3.
I've skipped the detail there but it works. :)

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 5:21 pm

I extracted the stage3 on the adjacent server and shared it via NFS. However, the boot image I am netbooting from cannot do NFS either, I suspect because it is too old.

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# mount -v -t nfs 192.168.53.7:/var/lib/stage3 /mnt/stage3
mount: mounting 192.168.53.7:/var/lib/stage3 on /mnt/stage3 failed: Input/output error

Are there additional steps I'm not using before mounting like the above?

It would really be nice if someone could just make an updated netboot ROM image.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 5:37 pm

Try

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mount -v -t nfs -o vers=2 ...

Or use rsync. I'm not good with rsync, so I won't offer a command.
How about sneakernet :)

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 6:01 pm

I am booted in using the outdated 2010 ftpboot image and it does not have rsync.

I tried your suggestion there and I also made check that my NFS server supports version 2. I also tried version 3 but this resulted in the same I/O error. This I/O error takes about 10 seconds to appear.

As for sneakermail, I do not have a SCSI cdrom and they are too expensive to buy.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 6:33 pm

kaizushi,

A USB stick?
Even if your SPARC is USB1. You will only do this once.

I won't suggest Kerrmit over a serial port, at least, not seriously.

Try asking in #gentoo-sparc on Libera IRC. Its quiet but all of Gentoos SPARC expertise is there.
You need to register a /nick to speak. It's a mild anti spam measure.
Someone there may know of a later image that you can PXE boot.

pingtoo · Post by **pingtoo** » Sun Apr 13, 2025 6:41 pm

There are some clarification you need to do.

Are you actually booted? do you have rootfs from the "image"? even over NFS is fine.

Or you are actually in initrd?

may be sharing output of command "mount" will give a clear picture.

I mean in theory if you got NFS root you should be able to mount another NFS share.

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Mon Apr 14, 2025 9:14 am

For some clarification I have booted the pxe image and gotten a busybox shell. I posted the output of uname -a above. I have not mounted a root partition via NFS, I was trying to mount a directory where I extracted the stage3 tarball to try to chroot into it. However, since this pxe image boots a 2.6 kernel I suspect I will have more troubles then. If there are some files to extract and use as an nfsroot, they were not mentioned in the wiki and I don't know how to find them.

I will be trying the method of using USB storage tomorrow. However, I will be chrooting into a 2025 stage3 from a 2010 PXE image. It would be good if the PXE images were updated.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Apr 14, 2025 9:29 am

kaizushi,

Debian has a PXE image from 2023.
Boot that, then use its shell to install Gentoo. I had to do something similar on ARM64 a few years ago.
You may need the Debian wiki page to coax it to PXE boot.
Debian no longer supports SPARC.

You will need one extra step. Debian does not provide /mnt/gentoo, so you need to create it.

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Mon Apr 14, 2025 11:58 am

I am not sure how to get a PXE image from the ISO in that link there. The Debian Wiki has some directions on making grub available on the tftp server, however they are for people who already have a working sparc64 system which I do not have. Can someone who has already done this perhaps make a tarball of the files their tftp server has, so I can just extract those?

pingtoo · Post by **pingtoo** » Mon Apr 14, 2025 2:57 pm

I am interesting solving boot related issue. I have some experience managing Solaris machines in the past. However I don't know all the detail of netboot for Sun machine.

If you interesting I be happy to work with you to come up solution for you case.

Gentoo Download site have current iso which I think would help (no guarantee since I have not done it before). BTW, it is not a netboot image therefor no "PXE image" per se. However it should have much modern kernel.

kaizushi · Post by **kaizushi** » Sat Apr 19, 2025 8:21 pm

I was hoping I would come back to this thread to find an answer to netboot easily, Debian or Gentoo, perhaps this could involve a new PXE image or a better instructions for Debian. I cannot boot the ISO (unless there is some way to boot it via PXE) as I do not have a SCSI drive to do so, and they are out of my price range. I really need hard support here, in the form of a working environment I can boot from PXE.

I looked at the Debian Sparc64 ISO you guys are talking about and there is a kernel and initrd I could use, and perhaps the other files could be on an NFS server. I am however unsure how to tell Sun OpenBIOS that there is both these files to download or the specific kernel arguments to do so. Some examples of what that OpenBIOS command should like would be nice.

pingtoo · Post by **pingtoo** » Sat Apr 19, 2025 9:40 pm

kaizushi wrote:I was hoping I would come back to this thread to find an answer to netboot easily, Debian or Gentoo, perhaps this could involve a new PXE image or a better instructions for Debian. I cannot boot the ISO (unless there is some way to boot it via PXE) as I do not have a SCSI drive to do so, and they are out of my price range. I really need hard support here, in the form of a working environment I can boot from PXE.

I looked at the Debian Sparc64 ISO you guys are talking about and there is a kernel and initrd I could use, and perhaps the other files could be on an NFS server. I am however unsure how to tell Sun OpenBIOS that there is both these files to download or the specific kernel arguments to do so. Some examples of what that OpenBIOS command should like would be nice.

Then may be move this thread to the SPARC section may be could get a better review.

My suggestion of using Gentoo iso is same as your idea of Debian Space64 ISO, may be just extract kernel/initrd then use your existing net boot (assume it is RARP).

for PXE boot in OBP just do boot net:dhcp. however you need to have PXE support infrastructure first and still need kernel/initrd/rootfs from somewhere.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Apr 20, 2025 1:52 pm

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo on Sparc.
It may get more support here.

SPARC ISOs should boot in a QEMU assisted virtual machine. I've not done that for about 15 years.
Once there, it should be possible to prepare grub so that the Debian ISO can be PXE booted.