[Nottingham] sparc conundrum

[David Bean]

On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 11:15, Duncan John Fyfe wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm trying to put Debian on an Ultra-5 but I've run into a slight problem.
> The CD Drive cannot read the CD-R's I've got.  It will read the official
> Solaris CD just not CD-R's.
My Sparc CD drive has a caddy... k3wl.

> It isn't my network so no fiddling with ARP/RARP ( I can get a DHCP
> issued IP address and no 'boot net:dhcp' doesn't work).
> Floppy booting doesn't work.
The Ultra range do not boot from floppies at all I believe, it's CD or
network only.

> I have put a core install of Solaris 9 on it atm.
> 
> Does anyone have a plan B that might just work ?
Yes

I did this on a Sparcstation 10 clocking a whoping 40MHz (now dual
50MHz) Redhat was installed when I bought it but I wanted Debian... I
simply followed the intructions...
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/install
specifically...
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/ch-preparing.en.html#s-linux-upgrade

Fortunately the 4Gb I had was partitioned into 2 x 2Gb partitions, plus
the whole slice, and swap, so I deleted /usr from Redhat and installed
my root on that. Next I booted into debian and nuked Redhat, muddled
around and got me a home partition. 

If you want more info or specifics you know where to ask.

David Bean