Re: Data Access Exception when trying to Boot installed NetBSD of hard drive

[Georg Brein <georg.brein%unibas.ch@localhost>]

IMHO boot should be fixed (o.k., easily said...).
But updating the ROM has other benefits als well
(if you find the proper image), since it fixes
(at least on a SS 2, but AFAIK the IPX
is similar enough) a number of unrelated problems: With
rev. 2.2 the onboard le ethernet used a bogus MAC address
(under NetBSD back in 2007; Solaris never had this problem),
the qec 4-port ethernet card didn't work at all due to FCode
incompatibilities, and it seems -though this may
be only a improper generalization from my experiences
(cf. the other postings in this thread)- that rev. 2.9
supports root file systems of up to 2GB in size (at the
start of the disk; the disk in my SS 2 has only 2GB,
so I didn't do any experimentation beyond this size)
while rev. 2.2 definitively did not.

Regards,
Georg Brein

Am 13.10.2014 um 20:48 schrieb Adrian Christiansen:

> Hi Georg!
> 
> I don't know if I should be happy or sad, but this actually got the
> system to boot. I used boot from 3.1 and the bootxx from 6.1.5. So
> there's my problem, I need a new BootROM I guess... or boot should be
> fixed?
> 
> Thanks!,
> Adrian.
> 
> 2014-10-13 19:18 GMT+02:00 Georg Brein <georg.brein%unibas.ch@localhost>:
>> I had the same (or similar) problem back in 2007 on
>> my SparcStation 2 (ROM Rev. 2.2) while installing NetBSD
>> 4.0 RC1 (see NetBSD bug report #37080):
>> 
>> The second stage boot loader from 4.0 RC1 failed
>> with a Data Access Exception. As a quick fix I
>> substituted the second stage boot loader from NetBSD
>> 3.1 which worked flawlessly with the 4.0 RC1
>> installation.
>> 
>> The proper fix (which took a little longer to implement
>> since I had to acquire an EPROM burner) was to upgrade
>> to ROM Rev. 2.9 (AFAIK the latest for the SparcStation 2)
>> which allowed the 4.0 RC1 (and later) second stage
>> boot loaders to function.
>> 
>> Of course this is old history; I don't know if the
>> 3.1 boot loader quick fix is still feasible with a
>> current NetBSD release, but it seems likely, since
>> the current boot loader still has the same version (1.15)
>> as the 4.0 RC1 boot loader back in 2007 which
>> indicates little change in this area of NetBSD (incidentally,
>> the boot loader for NetBSD 3.1 has version 1.15 as well; I
>> guess there was either a change in some included/linked
>> code or in the compiler used between NetBSD 3.1 and
>> NetBSD 4.0 RC1 leading to different binaries from the
>> same source code).
>> 
>> The latest ROM revision for the IPX seems to be 2.9
>> as well (but unfortunately I don't know where to get
>> the relevant IPX specific ROM image).
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Georg Brein
>> 
>> Am 12.10.2014 um 20:34 schrieb Adrian Christiansen:
>> 
>>> Hi guys!,
>>> 
>>> I'm relatively new to SUN machines and I just finished installing
>>> NetBSD onto my SPARCstation IPX. Followed the instructions in
>>> INSTALL.html and netbooted the install. Then I just followed the
>>> installation thru, using the entire disk and making a root partition
>>> at a: in the disklabel.
>>> 
>>> After that all completed I'm now stuck here in OpenBoot 2:
>>> 
>>> ok boot disk3:a netbsd
>>> Boot device: /sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@0,0:a   File and args: netbsd
>>>>> NetBSD/sparc Secondary Boot, Revision 1.15
>>> Booting netbsd
>>> Data Access Exception
>>> ok
>>> 
>>> There's a / spiny thing for a brief moment, the ROM revision is 2.3.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Honestly I don't really know where to go from here?
>>