Further changes in UltraPenguin 1.0.9

Further changes in UltraPenguin 1.0.9

[Jakub Jelinek]

Hi!

I've updated the ftp area of UltraPenguin.
I've tried to fix all bugs with tftp/floppy install I discovered,
particularly:

timeconfig/ntsysv are fixed
boot loader should be installed just fine

plus I've added a bunch of new things:

support for swaps 48k-2GB on sparc32, at the moment (due to kernel bug)
just 88k-2GB on sparc64, but that will change to 32TB once that bug is fixed
(waiting for Linus to merge it in)
support for SMP kernels (on SMP machines you should get the SMP kernel as
label smp in silo, plus with the rc.sysinit changes (I'll make rpm tomorrow)
I've made today you can just switch from SMP to UP and back at any time by
just typing a different boot label.
added rescue images:
rescue.img is a floppy image meant as second floppy with the boot floppy
created by the installer (that's a new thing as well)
tftprescue.img is a swiss-army knife for anyone in trouble. Due to some
strange kernel bug on sparc64 it will just work on sparc32 (the kernel has
problems to boot if somebody touched space above 4MB virtual from PROM
mapping - I'm still investigating)
New rpms:
silo-0.8.2	a new, fixed version of the boot loader
mkbootdisk	this is similar to that thingie in rawhide on Intel
genromfs	this is needed by mkbootdisk and by any program creating
		bootable romfs floppies

I'm close to get bootable CDs working and installing, but if you want that
soon, please test if you can what I'm just putting out and report any bugs
you'll see to me.

Cheers,
    Jakub
___________________________________________________________________
Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
___________________________________________________________________
Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
Linux version 2.1.126 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
___________________________________________________________________

Re: Further changes in UltraPenguin 1.0.9

[Malcolm Beattie]

Jakub Jelinek writes:
> I've updated the ftp area of UltraPenguin.
> I've tried to fix all bugs with tftp/floppy install I discovered,
> particularly:
> 
> timeconfig/ntsysv are fixed
> boot loader should be installed just fine

I'll give it another try on my Ultra5. I mirrored it the first time
and I've left it trying to mirror each night. Apologies if I should
have let you know in advance but I was eager to try it. Unfortunately,
recent mirror don't seem to have succeeded due to timeouts or failed
connections but I'll try running it manually. For those who are
interested, the mirror is
    ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/linux/ultralinux

A suggestion for improving the installation: at the moment it seems
to demand a swap partition. That's a nuisance since I only wanted to
put Linux on one partition on this box and I had to wipe out a 0.5GB
Solaris partition just to satisfy the install program's swap craving.
It would be nice if it could be made optional. Congratulations on
pulling everything together and getting it to the stage where it's
pretty much a straightforward install.

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>
Unix Systems Programmer
Oxford University Computing Services

Re: Further changes in UltraPenguin 1.0.9

[Jakub Jelinek]

> A suggestion for improving the installation: at the moment it seems
> to demand a swap partition. That's a nuisance since I only wanted to
> put Linux on one partition on this box and I had to wipe out a 0.5GB
> Solaris partition just to satisfy the install program's swap craving.
> It would be nice if it could be made optional. 

Ok, I'll look into that. redhat 5.0 installer just put out a warning, if you
don't want to reconsider it, that is apparently there, but some other places
unconditionally disallows it. I'll be merging differences between rawhide as
of a week ago and 5.2 into the installer, so that I can call it based on
rh5.2, today.

Cheers,
    Jakub
___________________________________________________________________
Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
___________________________________________________________________
Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
Linux version 2.1.126 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
___________________________________________________________________