[lug] Linux on a Sun Blade 1000

[Jeff]

Hi,

The SB1000 takes a standard SCSI CDROM or DVDROM drive.
There's nothing nonstandard about it.  What has been arguably
nonstandard was when Sun used to slice their CD distributions
(notably Solaris 8 & Solaris9).

As for the MMU problem, try this:

At the ok prompt, type the following:

ok> set-defaults
ok> setenv auto-boot? false
ok> reset-all

... when the system returns to the ok prompt,
    don't run any other commands other than:

ok> boot cdrom

Note that the set-defaults will erase any custom OBP settings
or changes.  This can either be omitted or run printenv and
devalias (or nvalias?) to see the current values.

The Fast MMU miss problem sometimes arises on older Sun
hardware when the OS is shutdown and another OS is attempted
to boot.  Sometimes the memory is not properly scrubbed.
A similar thing happens with the SCSI bus if you try to
run

Thank you very much!

-Jeff

NOTE: Any personal or contact information is not to be
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On Fri, 22 Jan 2010, David Morris wrote:

> 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
>
>