Re: Sun Fire V215 ALOM troubles

[Ken Wellsch <kwellsch%tampabay.rr.com@localhost>]

For what it is worth, I have ended up taking the "install Solaris" path
which I believe is where you would like to go after doing all the same
things I too tried to do with this era of sparc64 hardware.

When ALOM times out and tells you to use #. to return, you should be at
the host console where you would see output, be it from Solaris or
the OBP output.  Are you sure it is actually booting?  My experience is
the fans are rather quiet if it is only in standby and the ALOM is
booting.  You will get nothing from the host serial console side.

But if the thing sounds like a jet taking off, then it likely is booting
the host as ALOM is also booting up.  Of course seeing a drive light
blinking away may indicate some boot activity too.

I presume it does not have a graphics card like an XVR-100 with a VGA
connector.  This is not common but it depends what the machine was
used for.  No video card means the host system if booting should
show up on the maintenance serial port. Also OBP diags should be here
prior to host booting the OS.

Yes, if you can get to the ok and boot Solaris, then you can run
the Solaris command to set the ALOM password.

# /usr/platform/`uname -i`/sbin/scadm  userpassword admin

This is how I have been having to get at ALOM on a number of sparc64 boxes.