I did my first sparc install in quite a while over the weekend,
making a CD and booting that (my usual method).

My first attempt failed miserably - no-one told me (not that I
looked all that hard) that I had to have instfs.tgz at a magic
place on the CD.  But I'm not complaining about that, it is
probably documented somewhere, and I didn't bother to read it,
as I just assumed I knew how it was done...

What I do want to complain about is the fixed magic path for instfs.tgz
with no way to override it.

What I wanted to do, was build a CD with 1.5.1_BETA2 and 1.5V (20010514)
snapshots both on it, and then mksunbootcd using the boot.fs images from
both of those snapshots (so boot cdrom:b gets one and boot cdrom:c gets
the other - then for good measure I alternated through the rest of the
partitions...)

Needless to say, with both of them wanting their own instfs.tgz and each
wanting that to be in "sparc/installation/floppy/instfs.tgz" this was
a little difficult...

One solution would be to build snapshots so that they all look for
version/arch/<whatever> rather than just arch/<whatever> relative to
the installation media (well, FTP does, just cdrom doesn't...)

That would help, but even better (and probably essential), the script
(.profile) loaded in boot.fs needs to prompt for the location of the
instfs.tgz (with the default being wherever is decided is the "right"
place).   Then at least someone who knows what they're doing (which is
not necessarily me) can always find the instfs.tgz and reference it.

For CD booting on sparcs, since there is no magic limit on the filesys
size, I'd actually prefer that a boot.fs for CD (and I guess for tape
as well - I haven't used a tape to bot a sparc in well over a decade...)
be simply made as big as necessary, and everything included in it.
Keep the instfs.tgz version for genuine floppy booting only (though I
know that makes more special cases, which is always worth avoiding).

Something different will have to be done someday, eventually just the
kernel (the current boot.fs) is going to get bigger than will fit on one
floppy - when that happens, something like ustarfs will be essential
for floppy boots (no way to load a kernel and run it, then prompt for more).
And of course, ustarfs is useless for CD boots, so splitting the two will
have to happen then anyway.   If that were to happen now, then the
"fixed path" problem would go away - as no-one is going to be putting two
different copies of instfs.tgz on one floppy...

kre

ps: if anyone cares, the boot.fs in the 20010514 snapshot didn't boot
(the SS4 boot prom just claimed it wasn't bootable, though I forget the
exact message).   I ended up using just the 2.5.1_BETA2 boot.fs and instfs.tgz
to install 1.5.1_BETA2, and then to trash that and install the 20010514 1.5V
snapshot instead.   That usually works, but isn't guaranteed I assume, so
fixing the "fixed path to instfs.tgz" problem one way or another needs doing.