[lug] Linux on a Sun Blade 1000

[David Morris]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:32, Walter Pienciak
<wpiencia at thunderdome.ieee.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am looking to throw Linux onto an old Sun Blade 1000
> (UltraSPARC III processors).  I tried booting from a CD with
> ubuntu-9.10-server-sparc.iso, but got the "Fast MMU Miss" error
> and the Openboot prompt.
>
> Anyone running a decently modern distro on such hardware, or know
> which distro might be best for maintaining support for that
> platform?

I seem to recall SPARC CD readers are slightly different than normal
CD readers, but I don't recall how....

I always used a net boot with sparc systems, it is a far easier method
than burning a CD.  You basically need to setup a TFTP and RARP (or
DHCP) server, then at the boot prompt type something like "boot net".

As for distribution, Debian still has support for SPARC, which should
include the UltraSPARC III.  Here are net boot instructions for
Debian, which should work on any other distribution:

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/ch04s03.html.en

--David