Linux on a SPARCserver 470?

Wolf asks: "I have just obtained a Sun SPARCserver 470 out of a government assets disposal sale. I need some hints (instructions) on how to install Linux on the beast. No root password, unfortunately. It has a CD-ROM and tape backup 2 serial ports and 3 ethernet ports, any info will be greatfully accepted. " Hmmm...government assets disposal sale? How come no one tells me of these things?

duh..

[Zurk]

use the cdrom and redhats cd to boot the beast. wipe the drive (no root password required for wiping) and be happy.

Hope that you a PROM version > 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't tell in your question if you are new or not on the Sparc platform. If you are an old-timer on Sun hardware, you might know better than me. However, I had RedHat 5.2 and Debian 2.1 working on SparcStation 10.

First, you might want to have a look at the Sun Hardware Reference here [sunhelp.org]. Good info on the peculiarity of Sun machine.

Sun's "BIOS" are called PROM. The PROM have a lot of functionnality (network access, etc). When you boot, a combination of key get you to a PROM prompt (can't remember the combination on the top of my head; check out the SHR). From there, if your CD-ROM is bootable AND you have a PROM v2.0 or higher, typing "boot cdrom" will boot your CD-ROM. If you have an older PROM, the command is quite a bit more complicated; check Part 2 of the SHR. You can also boot a floppy by typing (you guessed it !) "boot floppy". Note that Sun floppy does not have an eject button (like the Mac). To eject your floppy, "eject floppy" should work (at least from the OS prompt; don't know if this work at the PROM prompt).

From there on, just wipe the entire disk and install as usual. You might want to know that, for some reasons unknown to me, on Sun machine you MUST have your third partition (sda3) of type "whole disk" emcompassing the whole drive. SHR as probably somthing to say on the matter.

This might not be particularly useful for your situation. I am not on my Sun right now, and can't give much more info. You should check the installation manual of your distribution for more specific info. In particuliar, RedHat is well documented on the specific of installing on a Sun.

Good luck and enjoy !

Re:Hope that you a PROM version > 2.0

[spinkham]

A few additions..
If your Sparc doesn't stop at the OK prompt, a "stop-a" keypress will bring it up, then you can do your "boot cdrom" from there...
As for why a "whole disk" partition is needed, IIRC, it is only there for compatibility with Solaris/SunOS. I think if you are only going to run Linux, you can forgo that..
However, I don't know all that much about SUN firmware (yet)..

Linux on (old?!!) Sparc

[yabHuj]

If I remember correctly, the 470 is one of the very first SPARC servers? That might be a problem, don't know. It is not explicitly on the "compatible" list, you see? (sun4: 4/100, 4/200, and 4/300 // sun4c: SS1, SS1+, IPC, SLC, SS2, IPX, and ELC // sun4m: at least the LC, LX, 4, 5, 10, 20, and 600MP)

You can find hints for the installation of the Debian port of Linux for Sparc at:
http://www.debian.org/releases/s link/sparc/install [debian.org]

But you could try OpenBSD, too (http://www.openbsd.org/sparc.html [openbsd.org]) or NetBSD (http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sparc/inde x.html [netbsd.org]) as operating system for your box.

I think you're out of luck

[David E. Myers]

The Sun SPARCserver 4/470 is an old system, introduced in 1990. It is VME bus based, and Sun dropped OS support for it at Solaris 2.5.1. It is not a "sun4c" or "sun4m" architecture, which are the 32-bit SPARC architectures listed as supported by Linux.

Architecture

[Al Wold]

The first thing to do would probably be to find the architecture. If it's sun4 anything, it should theoretically work. I think I'd consider leaving sunos on it, just for fun. If it has anything funky like smp, it would only use it in sunos. Check out www.sunhelp.org for some info on the machine and how to crack into sunos without the root pw (maybe you'll get some cool secret gov't stuff from the hard drive)

470 is VME bus, so no luck with RedHat

[hndrcks]

The VME bus is not supported. I don't think Debian supports it either (it's a kernel-level limitation).

Other comments: yes, you do have to have a whole-disk partition, even with linux. And if you have a pre-2.0 prom, you can still boot a cdrom: usually they are on ID 6 on a Sun box, so at >

b sd(0,6,0) linux (or whatever)