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Solaris 8 Installation on Sparc 5! Can't boot from CD??!?!?!?! 1

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johndog

Technical User
Apr 17, 2001
103
US
I am trying desparately to install Solaris 8 onto my SparcStation 5 to no avail. I am not sure how to specify the cdrom as a /dev because I don't know what device # it is. Since I cannot boot from the cdrom drive, I can't install solaris. I am trying to do all of this from within the bios. By using the "help" command in the bios, I am given a list of options, some which tell how to boot the sparc from cdrom, net, or disk, but every time I try to boot from the cdrom, it just reboots and then goes back to the normal "OK" prompt. What am I not doing right??? Please Help!!!! Thanks!!
 
when you tell it to 'boot cdrom' has it already tried booting to anything before hand?
if it has then it will reboot (working out that it's now got to boot to a different device)
if your machine doesn't know what 'cdrom' is, in order to boot from it, then you might just have to go searching ... if it's scsi, then it should boot scsi-id 6

if it's not, you might have to know which device it is

if you have a system already on your machine then you can look at /dev/dsk for your cdrom device, if not try booting c0t2d0 (or one of it's slices)

you never know, it might work :)
 
I have just started working with Solaris 2.8 on a Sun Ultra 5 and the CD-ROM device on this system is c0t2d0s2. This system came pre-installed so I would assume this is a standard used by Sun (although ass-u-ming is dangerious :))
 
Here is a way to do this.
At the OK prompt run probe-scsi command. It will list your devices. Note the target number for your cdrom (removable read only device) - that is it's scsi id. If it is not on the list, run probe-scsi-all. If it still wont show up - you may have scsi id conflict.
Then run boot cdrom command. It will fail, but give a message, something like:
Boot device: /iommu/sbus.......sd@6,0:d
Number 6 at the end is the default scsi id - 6. Now take the whole line, replace 6 with id you got earlier, and type in the command:
boot /iommu.........sd@<your number here>,0:d
Make sure you type it in exactly the way it looks.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for all of the help, but when I tried the suggestion by BOKA, it seemed like it would work, only I got an error message saying &quot;Bad magic number in disk label, can't open disk label package&quot;. SO does this mean that the cd i have is bad? The cdrom drive is a scsi. I am also not sure which jumper i should set on the back of the drive, there are four jumpers: prty, id1, id2, id4 (i think) and then there are three more jumpers to the right: alw/?, test, and term. I only have one scsi hard disk, a floppy, and a scsi cdrom. So i'm not sure if the jumper i have set right now (term, and prty) are giving me trouble. Thanks for any help!!
 
It looks like your CD could be a problem. Like the previous comments your CDROM should be SCSI ID 6. If this is set to something else it will not boot from it. I'm not sure but the CDROM may need to be on the first SCSI controller.
If you type probe-scsi at the OK> prompt it will list your SCSI devices and you will know what the CDROM is set to. If you have more than 1 SCSI controller you have to use probe-scsi-all to get all the SCSI devices. ID4 & ID2 should give you SCSI ID 6.
If this is all right you should be able to enter boot cdrom and away you go.
 
we had a problem recently one of our sparc-classics could boot from cdrom, another couldn't ...

we had an OS installed on one sparc, but not on the other.

the bios revision on checking was .2 different ...

after banging our heads against a wall, we decided to swap harddisks/shells of the 2 machines, and now everyone is happy ... :)
 
If you got as far as &quot;bad magic number in disk label...&quot;, that means your cdrom drive is fine, but the cd itself is not bootable. Are you sure your cd is not for x86 platform?
Do you have another OS cd that you know is good and you have booted from before and you can try to boot from?
From what you said above your cd is set to id 0 (id1, id2, id4 are empty). It will work anyway, but to make it default - 6, you can put jumpers on id2 and id4.
If you have dowloaded Solaris 8 from SUN and created your cd from image file, there may be a problem in how you created it or what kind of software you have used.
BTW, I have not asked this but your cd drive is internal to the station, right?
Anyway, I just looked in my sparc20 and my cdrom does not have prty jumper on - only has term, id2 and id4. It should not matter, but...

Good luck.
 
is this the same question as the other one in the list ... did you create this CD using a windoze PC?
 
So, here's how the whole thing goes! I went to Sun.com, downloaded the binary version of Solaris 8 for Sparc. After downloading the file(from a PC), I expanded it using Winzip, then I burnt it onto a cd. I think that the cdrom drive is fine because I can detect it with no problem. I think that the real problem is with the cd that i burned. SO tomorrow I will download Solaris 8 again but from my Sparcstation and then expand it using 'gunzip', and then burn it onto a cd (on PC). I have no choice but to burn the cd using a PC, but i can download and unzip it from a Unix system. Is there any other important steps i should take??? Thanks!!
 
Hm-m-m... Everything you did looks correct. I do not believe there is a difference if you download and unzip the software on SUN or pc, since it is not actual files, but rather a cd image. And you will burn it on pc anyway. What recording software and what recorder did you use? Also what is the brand of your blanks? Also are those blanks cdr or cdrw?
 
Thanks for all the Help Boka! I figured out that i just needed to change the file type to .iso after expanding it with Winzip 8.0. It actually had nothing to do with what type of machine it was downloaded on or what type of cd i used. Problem solved!!!
 
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