Hi, I had a problem installing linux on a ultra5 with solaris 2.7 and solaris 2.8 on it. I had created the 5th partiton for linux and the 6th for the linux swap partiton (=> hda5 / for linux with ext2 and hda6 for swap). Everything went ok until the task to make the system bootable.
There were 3 possibilities: 1. Make the system bootable 2. Boot floppy 3. Alternate1 Because the first possibility would overwrite my bootblock for Solaris I tried to make a boot floppy for linux but without success. I've read somewhere that could be a problem with some ultrasparc machines like ultra5/10. I thought alternate1 wouldn't change the boot behaviour but I was wrong. The Debian linux installation has overwritten my boot block for solaris. I wasn't asked if I wanted to install SILO there and I don't know a reason for installing it on an other partition than my linux partition (/dev/hda5) but it has happened somehow ... The funny thing was that with alternate1 I can't start solaris and I can't start linux. There wasn't a possibility for me not to corrupt my boot block with SILO from Debian, that should and need not be. The easiest thing would be to add a possibility which calls silo -t or silo -r /mnt -t or something like that. It was really nasty to repair the thing. Just using dd from a rescue disk and deleting the first sector like: # make a backup of the boot sector dd if=/dev/hda1 of=boot_512.sonne bs=512 count=1 # clean the boot sector dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 doesn't work. The first sector just contain the disk lable and partition information. The boot block on sparc machines are the next 15 sectors or something like that. The only possibility for me was to start the solaris installation cd. During the installation process Openwin is started and there I got a shell to run installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 With silo -t I had managed it to be able to get SILO just to my linux partition and boot it with boot disk:e I've read that there should be soon a new GNU Debian version and it would be great if there's an easy possiblity to install with -t option. OpenBoot is really an easy and nice possibility to boot several operating systems, so just booting into SILO isn't nice in every case especially if solaris or bsd is used, too. GNU Debian is a really nice linux but it would be even nicer if the installation process of silo or maybe grub let the user the possibility to still use OpenBoot for the other operating systems. I hope the description of my problems can help other people to solve them without having much trouble installing linux parallel to sparc solaris. Maybe there's a better solution in the new soon coming Debian Linux and maybe there are other better solution of installing Debian on sparc but I try a short abstract: At the boot loader installation just select Make system bootable => the boot block of solaris can be overwritten but this isn't problematic if you have the solaris installation CDs. After completing the linux installation run silo -t Then boot the solaris CDs and run e.g. installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 for installing the solaris boo block on the first partition on an ide disk. Now you can boot Solaris and linux again without configure silo.conf Kind regards Roland which had problems installing linux on there sparc machine parallel to solaris I hope this description of my problems may help other people during there linux i -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
