NetBSD Install on SparcStation 10 ================================= Shanker Balan http://shankerbalan.com/ Changelog: Fri May 9 15:37:06 IST 2003 - Added ToDo Thu May 8 16:48:49 IST 2003 - Initial commit Hardware: - Sun SparcStation 10 (2 CPU) - 128 MB RAM - 4GB SCSI drive Got this Sun SparcStation 10 (2 SMP) which is running RedHat 6.1. Since RedHat has stopped offerring Sparc version of its Linux distributions, I thought maybe NetBSD is a good choice. The hardware is mostly kaput with a busted floppy drive and no cdrom drive. My only option is to do an install over the network. Why NetBSD? I use FreeBSD for my destop needs, Linux on my production and client servers, OpenBSD as my security reference and Windows as my gaming OS. The only OS I am yet to dabble with is NetBSD and in this case, I think NetBSD is an apt choice considering the hardware constraints of the system. NetBSD is committed to support legacy hardware and the install base is very cmpact since the primary development target for NetBSD are embedded system with low system specs. The plan is to remote boot NetBSD keeping the currenlty installed version of RedHat Linux intact so that I can revert back in case of problems. If I nuke the Linux OS, there is no easy way to get the machine back up since the floppy and cd drive is kaput. Besides, I dont have a copy of RedHat Sparc Linux on hand. See ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.6/sparc/INSTALL.html for reference. Hiccups: - "test net" failure The 10 MBPS network controller seems to have issues negotiating with the D-Link switch. For the moment, I am using a hub cascaded to the switch which fixes the OpenBoot network tests. - RARP/ARP Requests Failed Obviously I dont RTFM. Sparc uses rarp and then does bootp requests. The "rarpd" daemon has to be running on the LAN before I can get started. Started downloading the required dist sets, kernel and boot images from ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.6.1/sparc/. I now have OpenBoot picking up an IP address from the DHCP server after a rarp request. Downloading the base.tgz (20MB) set is gonna take some time. Downloading from archive.progeny.com, way faster then ftp.netbsd.org. There is no Singapore mirror which would have been the closest from my ISP (VSNL) - Thu May 8 18:41:49 IST 2003 Download done, set up rc.conf and the nfs exports as documented. The system now boots and gives me a login prompt. Setting the OpenBoot auto-boot? variable to "false", dont want it to do any auto booting for the moment. Geting a lot of [196^Z dumps on the screen with constant beeps right after mounting the root fs from the NFS server. Sometimes the beeps stop after I hit a key and sometimes nothing happens. Disabled the "wpad-text" option from my dhcp server, for some strange reason, the sparc seems to be using the "proxy.pac" during the bootp request and then continues to load the kernel. Enables sshd, took atleast 4 minutes to generate the keys. God this machine *IS* slow. "ssh sparc1 -1" is better. "Swapctl" complains that /swap is world readable, Changing permissins on the swap file on the NFS server to "root:wheel" with 0600 perms. Keyboard mapping is all screwed, will fix this later. Hmm.. after enabling sshd, the keyboard seems to have gone kaput and cant login via ssh. RootLogins off by default. Ok, local logins and ssh as root works after a reboot. Every thing is now up, no need for any X config files, just a "startx" and everything works. Now just need to get X > 256 colors. Grr.. looks like it *CANT* do it. The entire netboot setup was done with just 34MB of downloads. WoW! ToDo: The main requirement is to run X at depths > 8bit but that does not seem to be possible as the X server autoconfigures itself to the highest resolution supported by the framebuffer. On a 1MB framebuffer, its 1152x864@8bpp I think. What I need to figure out is to drop the framebuffer resolution to say 800x600 and up the depth to atleast 16bpp. Need to google more. Some help at http://www.sunhelp.org/faq/FrameBuffer.html NetBSD tries an fsck on the root filesystem, since its a NFS mount, perhaps the fsck can be avoided.