From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Walter Keeler Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 17:52:29 +0000 Subject: Introduction Message-Id: List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: ultralinux@vger.kernel.org Hi! My name is Walter Keeler, and I've been working with the Debian Linux for Sparc CD set for about two weeks now. I have Linux up and running on a Sparc 5 at home, which will be my DSL gateway/firewall once I get DSL installed a week from now. I've been trying to get Linux running on an Ultra 5 at work, with considerably less success. First off, during the installation process, I can set aside a swap partition, but when I try to format it as swap, the process fails. The VC with system messages indicates inability to read a swap filesystem signature in the swap partition, but I have no clue how to create such a signature. Secondly, Linux is in place, X won't run. Whether I run startx or Xsun directly, I get a blank screen with a line cursor in the upper right-hand corner; I can switch VC's, and when I come back, the server has died with two messages, the first saying X should be up on VC 7, the second a segmentation fault. I thought compiling a new kernel might help, so I got 2.2.9 source off the net; however, when I tried to make vmlinux, the compilation dies right away with sparc64-linux-gcc - no such file. I found a sparc 64 RPM on the net, used Debian's alien package to convert it to .deb and installed it; however, it seemed to need glibc 2.1, and Debian installed 2.0. Attempting to upgrade the glibc to 2.1 resulted in predictable havoc (all gettys died during the next reboot, trying to find 2.0 symbols and failing), so I'm pretty much stuck for the moment. Once I get to feeling more ambitious, I'll probably take a stab at installing the next, unstable Debian release (potato) over the net off the boot CD I have with slink (current stable Debian). I'd do without a boot CD at all, except that setting up a RARP server is such a pain. This is sorta fun! --Walter Keeler wkeeler@acm.org ******************************* Walter Keeler * If my words did glow... * San Francisco, CA *******************************