[Gllug] Gentoo on Sparcstation 20

[Adrian McMenamin]

On Friday 19 Nov 2004 18:38, John Edwards wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 11:52:44PM +0000, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> > I have burnt a Gentoo minimal CD and have a SCSI CD rom attached to my
> > Sparc box (the CD have device no set to 6 to ensure external booting).
> > The box is headless and I haven't got a keyboard or a null modem cable.
> >
> > When I boot the box there is clearly interaction between the box and the
> > Cd rom but the whole setup appears to reboot every 30 - 40 seconds or so.
> > What I really want is a working network connection so I can ssh to the
> > box or even just find out what the ID of the NIC is :(
> >
> > is there any way to do this (eg by editing the iso to automate all the
> > things I need to do, according to the gentoo site to get it to boot), or
> > is there an alternative live cd that will "just work"?
> >
> > Adrian
> >
> > (Hope this makes sense - very difficult to know what is going on with the
> > box)
>
> Hi
> I've not used Gentoo but did have a look at it a few months back
> and at the time it's bootable CDs only had support for 64 bit CPUs:
>     http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/sparc/2004.3/livecd/
>     http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/sparc/2004.2/livecd/README.html
>

the 2004.1 releases supports the 32 bit boxes

> If this is still the case then the SparcStation series only have 32 bits
> CPUs and so if the kernel on the CD is only 64 bit that it could well be
> crashing.
>
> A serial cable with null modem should only cost a couple of quid and is
> probably the best next step.
>

A couple of quid!? I cannot see one on sale for less than £15 - three times 
more than I paid for the box!

> I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned www.sunhelp.org but they have
> a lot of information on old Sun kit there, including FAQs on the OpenBoot
> PROM and what happens when the NVRAM battery dies and the machine losses
> it's ethernet MAC addresss.
>
>
> --
> #---------------------------------------------------------#
>
> |       John Edwards    Email: John.Edwards at uk.com        |
> |
> | A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion |
> | Q. Why is top posting bad ?                             |
>
> #---------------------------------------------------------#
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