[lug] Linux on a Sun Blade 1000

[Walter Pienciak]

Thanks for the replies, all.  I'm documenting this here in case
someone Googles/bings/surfs along with a similar question in hand.

I finally got a chance to get back to this.  Bottom line:
success.

It was indeed "Fast Data Access MMU miss" -- I typed the original
e-mail from memory of the previous evening's attempt.

NETBOOT! was the number-one suggestion.  But I optimized for time
and tired a few images downloaded while I was otherwise occupied
rather than setting up (and then tearing down) the services for a
netboot.

None of the suggested Openboot incantations had any effect on the
presence or absence of the "Fast Data Access MMU Miss" message.
No matter what I typed, these failed:
  ubuntu-9.10-server-sparc.iso
  ubuntu-9.10-alternate-sparc.iso
and this Gentoo image worked:
  install-sparc64-universal-2008.0.iso

This was a serendipitous happening, as 1) I have never played
with Gentoo before and 2) it was refreshing to build a system
with the command-line tools and handcrafted approach that Gentoo
takes.  It's been a while.
  
I thought the Gentoo installation instructions were flawless. 
So here's the relevant bit for the Sun Blade 1000:

I downloaded current kernel source, compiled, diddled this and
that, and rebooted.  Whoops.

  Cannot open root device "sda1" or unknown-block(0,0)
  Please append a correct "root=" boot option

That's a message one can get for any number of reasons that can
take a while to iterate through.  Bottom line, in this case, on
my Sun Blade 1000, the kernel needed to be recompiled with a
driver for the QLogic qla2xxx fiber channel adapter.

Gentoo even has a page/process to make that easy:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-704268-highlight-ql2200fw+bin.html

Problem solved.  The machine is currently chugging away
downloading/compiling/install the X11 stuff -- as I think my
family prefers that to the command line.  These kids . . .

Walter