On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, Martin Husemann wrote:

>On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 04:37:45PM +0100, Christian Smith wrote:
>> Now, my question is, will the sparc64 bootloader work with sparc?
>
>I don't quite understand. The bootloader and kernel have to match your
>hardware - if you run on a ultra sparc, you need the sparc64 bootloader
>and a sparc64 kernel (which the sparc GENERIC_SUN4U is a variant of).
>
>Next step, but mostly orthogonal, is userland:
> - a 64bit kernel (like the sparc64 GENERIC) can execute both 32bit sparc
>   userland and 64bit userland
> - a 32bit kernel (like GENERIC_SUN4U) will only execut 32bit userland
>
>Hope this helps,


My origional query is whether the sparc64 bootloader is sun4u specific. I
presume from that response that it is, as I suspected.

What I was wondering was could I have the following layout, somewhat
similar to how Linux distributions layout bootstrap:

# Shared between sparc and sparc64
/dev/sd0a	/	ffs
/dev/sd0b	none	swap

# sparc boot
/dev/sd0d	/boot	ffs
# sparc64 boot
/dev/sd0e	/boot64	ffs

Then install the sparc bootloader and kernel into sd0d, and the sparc64
bootloader and GENERIC_SUN4U kernel into sd0e, and hardcode both kernels
for root on sd0a.

Booting on sun4[cm] would then be a case of booting sd0d, and sun4u a case
of booting sd0e.

Is this practical? Has anyone tried it?

The disk involved will be a play disk that I'm currently running on an
Ultra10, but will eventually be moving to an IPX or classic, hence my
desire to use sparc port rather than sparc64 with 32 bit compatibility.

>
>Martin
>

Cheers,
Christian

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