SPARC packages availability for 9.0 and install report

[Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost>]

Hi all!

I sucesfully installed NetBSD 9.0 on a SparcStation 20 (nothing
exciting, single CPU, no cache, since the nice HyperSPARC Dual CPU with
Cache "fried" giving errors at boot... I think the cache/cache
controller is gone) [*]

It has been hard, the PROM is "flakey" probably just about to die.

I had issues with booting: CD-ROMs had issues... with several drives,
the old ones do not CD-RW but for some reasons I fought also with a
newer drive Plextor which reads then: I was able to boot NetBSD, but
then couldn't load the tarballs, getting SCSI erros on esp0.
An attempt to use an external drive which I did not use since 5 years
failed, the PSU exploded after 10 minutes :-P

So well, solution was to get another drive, dump miniroot on it.... and
I was finally able to work.

I hope the esp0 errors are not endemic to the new kernels. Old NetBSDs
were rock-stable on SPARC.

Then I had damn partition issues, the machine was running OpenBSD
before, labels and disks were "similar" so they were picked up, but I
got overlapping partitions, couldn't delete them.. confusing
Using "configure partitions" segfaulted repeatedly!

The solution was to "dd" the disklabel as seen in the FAQ.. and so I was
able to fdisk/disklabel/news and the SS20 is up and running! I currently
just the the serial to set the boot due to PROM, then it works.


pkgin addition failed and it is now clear to me: there are no packages
for 9.0! only for 8.x series....

Are there issues? do we need to be patient?


Thank you.

Riccardo



[*] Anyone has spares? I have also some small items to trade in case