Installation Experience on Sparc

[TheHesser]

Thanks lnelson! This walkthrough is just what I needed.
I was wondering if you know what the problem could be with my install.

I installed Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and then came to the screen where the installation hangs. Then I did exactly as you said and did an rescue. The check goes okay and when I reboot it keeps saying that Drive not ready - Can't open boot device
I don't get the Silo loader or anything else. (it was installed before when I got it by another person)

I tried boot disk1, disk2, scsi but it doesn't load.
setenv boot-device = disk1
setenv auto-boot? = true

Do you know what I need to do next?
This is my first cup of Ubuntu for Sparc and I am addicted.

Thanks for your input!

[Hendrik_van_Dijk]

I have found the initial problem:
It should have been boot disk
So "setenv boot-device disk" works.

But after following the upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 my server hangs at the following:

Boot device: disk File and args:
SILO Version 1.4.14
boot:
Allocated 64 Megs of memory at 0x40000000 for kernel
Uncompressing image...
Loaded kernel version 2.6.32
Loading initial ramdisk (8461366 bytes at 0x28000000 phys, 0x40C00000 virt)...
\

Can anyone help my with what could be the problem. I installed the server 3 times and followed the whole manual in this thread to the letter. All three times my server hangs at this stage of booting.

[TheHesser]

I have found the initial problem:
It should have been boot disk
So "setenv boot-device disk" works.

But after following the upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 my server hangs at the following:

Boot device: disk File and args:
SILO Version 1.4.14
boot:
Allocated 64 Megs of memory at 0x40000000 for kernel
Uncompressing image...
Loaded kernel version 2.6.32
Loading initial ramdisk (8461366 bytes at 0x28000000 phys, 0x40C00000 virt)...
\

Can anyone help my with what could be the problem. I installed the server 3 times and followed the whole manual in this thread to the letter. All three times my server hangs at this stage of booting.

[tgalati4]

I would review the changes between 8.04 and 8.10 and see what changed in the kernel versions. It's possible that there is a bug in the 8.10 kernel and your CPU. So now you would search the net for that kernel version and bugs filed against the Sparc architecture.

Since both distros are quite old, why did you need to go from 8.04 to 8.10? Did you consider a jump from 8.04 to 10.04, since I believe there is a direct LTS upgrade option. Of course there is probably a very, very small chance that 10.04 would work out of the box.

How old is the machine? Any date stamps on the hardware? How many watts of power does it use? For a 24/7 server this can become an issue.