Very Computer

This is kind of two questions in one

I've just acquired an un-needed sparc clone from work - it's badged "Solair",
has a label underneath stating that it's made by DTK computers and anounces
itself as a "DTKstation/Classic+". I though that I might have a look at the
sparc port for fun.

So I copied the RedHat 4.0 sparc boot image (the v2 image since the machine
claims a version 2.9 ROM) and booted it up.

The kernel loads, identifies all (I think) of the hardware gets as far as
loading the ramdisk image and produces the message
   "VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)."
and then hangs

So...

Is the problem that it's a clone (looks like a Sun to me,  right down to the
ROM commands but I've not had much experience with clones).

Is the problem that it's a Sun4M (I recall that the sparc version doesn't work
on all of the sparc chips).

Is the problem that this machine is headless - it's connected to a VT220 (well
a Wyse pretending to be a VT220). Is there the equivalent of the serial console
patch for the sparc port and do I need it ?

Is it something else (all suggestions gratefully recieved).

Regards

Paul.

Quote:>Is the problem that it's a Sun4M (I recall that the sparc version doesn't work
>on all of the sparc chips).

Quote:>Is the problem that this machine is headless - it's connected to a VT220 (well
>a Wyse pretending to be a VT220). Is there the equivalent of the serial console
>patch for the sparc port and do I need it ?

I had a headless IPC, and I had to change /dev/console to be a link to
/dev/ttyS0 (the serial port I was using) and change the gettys started
in /etc/inittab to match.  I didn't use Redhat's install, but untarred
the old rootfs tarball and booted it diskless.  Once it was running, I
created a FS, and extracted the RPMs by hand.

If you aren't looking forward to this, maybe you can borrow a monitor
from someone so you can get it installed.

Quote:>Is it something else (all suggestions gratefully recieved).

[Still using Sir Topam Hatt, eh what!]

Paul Flinders posted 34 lines in

With Solaris, it is possible to tell the kernel to redirect the console to
the serial port by placing set console = 1 in /etc/system.  What happens is
that the boot PROM hands over user I/O control to the kernel  soon after
the Solaris banner is displayed, so both the boot loader and the kernel
need to know where the console is.  I don't know if Linux supports this on
SPARC.

--
"Get this cheese to sick bay, and have the doctor take a good look."
        - Star Trek: Voyager, "Learning Curve"
"Well, I don't know lad; it's like no cheese I ever tasted."
        - Nick Parks, "A Grand Day Out"

Quote:>With Solaris, it is possible to tell the kernel to redirect the console to
>the serial port by placing set console = 1 in /etc/system.  What happens is
>that the boot PROM hands over user I/O control to the kernel  soon after
>the Solaris banner is displayed, so both the boot loader and the kernel
>need to know where the console is.  I don't know if Linux supports this on
>SPARC.