From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Roger J. Allen" Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 05:55:14 +0000 Subject: booting from a scsi tape drive Message-Id: List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: ultralinux@vger.kernel.org I noticed in the RedHat 5.1 errata for sparc that they had info on booting from a tape drive. I have an Ultra1 with an Exabyte 8505XLE 8mm tape drive at home, so I decided to give it a try. Under Solaris 2.6, with sunsite.mff.cuni.cz's ultrapenguin-1.0.9/sparc/images/tftpboot.img: dd if=tftpboot.img of=/dev/rst12 conv=sync Then get to the boot prompt and type: boot tape Then the Penguin appears! So, we can add another "Boot Method" to the UltraPenguin 1.0.9 Installation Guide (not that there will be may sites that need it :-) ). At least you do not have to figure out your IP address in hex. That's the good news. Now the questions! I was trying to install without a local area network connection. I use PPP at home. I had hoped to do a Hard Disk Installation by making a tape at work (with tar) and used sneaker net to bring the tape home and copied it onto a Solaris 2.6 ufs filesystem. Unfortunately, I missed the last line of the fine Installation Guide's Hard Disk Installation section which says that the files have to be on an ext2 filesystem. I was able to use a virtual console and create an ext2 filesystem on a spare partition, but I cannot figure out how to get the RedHat directory there. I found cpio, made another tape with cpio under Solaris 2.6 and tried to install again. I was able to: mknod /dev/st0 c 9 0 but I could not get cpio to read anything from the tape. This is the same tape drive that I wrote it with, so that is not the problem. I was just trying to verify that I could read the tape with: cpio -itv -I /dev/st0 but the led's on the tape drive go on solid, and Alt-F4 shows esp errors (bad parity?) scrolling across the screen so fast that I cannot read them, and it is time to reboot :-( I also tried tapes made with "-H crc" and different block sizes, but the same thing kept happening. Is there some way to copy the distribution from a Solaris 2.6 ufs filesystem to an ext2 filesystem on the same machine? How about a way to cpio from the tape drive to the ext2 filesystem after booting the installation program? Otherwise, I guess I have to cook up a CD or carry my Ultra1 to work. If it will help, I can try again and write down the exact error messages. Trying to Push the Edge of the Envelope -- but I may have gone to far. Roger J. Allen Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center System Administrator Chicago, IL USA Surgical Information Systems Voice: (312)-942-4825 Internet: rja@sis.rpslmc.edu FAX: (312)-733-6921