Re: installing NetBSD on a Sparcstation 2.

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 24 August 2010 00:06, Dan Oglesby <danno%serverunderground.com@localhost> 
wrote:

>> As a final check, would you be willing to look at a -current boot
>> floppy? - eg
>> http://nyftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/201008100000Z/sparc/installation/floppy/
>
> The first disk boots up to the point where you get the little spinning 
> stick/progress indicator, but after a couple of minutes it errors with:
>
> lseek section headers: invalid file offset
> Cannot load netbsd: error=103
>
> device[/fd@1,f7200000:a] ("halt" to halt):
>
> Very similar to how the boot from floppy fails on 5.0.2 floppies.

Hmm - thats coming from *_loadfile() in lib/libsa/loadfile_elf32.c, in
a section which is (flags & (LOAD_SYM|COUNT_SYM)). I'm pretty sure the
bootload on floppies is not supposed to load the symbol table to avoid
just such an issue.

I would assume that its failing in start_kernel() in
arch/sparc/stand/ofwboot/boot.c

I don't have a sparc box with floppy to hand, but I could point you at
where to add some debugging (or put up a couple of debugging boot
floppy images) if you were interested in looking at this?

If someone actually familiar with the sparc and libsa code wants to
chime in that would be not be a problem :)