Sun Ultra 10 Can't open boot device

[app87k]

Alright, I have read and read everything I could find on the internet about this and tried everything to no avail. First off, I'm a UNIX/LINUX and OpenBoot n00b. Heres the issue:

Ive got a Sun Ultra 10 work station.
In it I have:

DVD-RW With Lightscribe over PATA
UPA Graphics card
Sun SCSI Card (pci)
Seagate SCSI 10K RPM 160 GB Disk (i know im limited on size)
768 MB or RAM
and 440MHz UltraSparc IIi 64-bit

This system worked very well when i had a PATA disk in it, but was very slow due to it only being ATA-66. So I was like "Hey, SCSI will speed up my system!".

I can boot the Sun Solaris 10 installer DVD-ROM in the DVD drive with no issue, and can even install Solaris 10 to the SCSI disk. But when I reboot, I get the infamous:
"Bad magic number in disk label
Can't open disk label package"

Ive tried a great number of things with no success. I have tried using "format" with "label", which did not work. I have tried setting the device up in open boot. I have tried to ensure that the device id is set properly on the hardware. (ID: 0)

I would have figured that since the OS installer (Solaris 10) was able to read and install to the SCSI disk, that it could have set the boot parameters correctly.

From the Solaris 10 installer I do know this about the FS structure:

root device c1t0d0

file systems

c1t0d0s0 / 8188 MB
c1t0d0s1 / swap 512 MB
c1t0d0s7 /exporte/home 61297 MB

If that helps at all.

Attempting the command "boot /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@1/disk@0,0:a" does not work.

If i "show-disks" I get this:

a) /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@1/disk
b) /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom
c) /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk
d) /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/fdthree@14,3023f0
q) NO SELECTION


Im at a loss, I just need help from someone who knows what the heck their doing. Did Sun want to make this so hard that no one could ever get their computers up and running? I do miss you though Sun......

Thanks mates!

 

[cndcadams]

interesting

1) Is it a Sun OEM drive? Meaning does it have a sun sticker on it.


you said.. I have tried using "format" with "label", which did not work. That is a problem right there. If you can't label you have an issue with the drive.

2) did you try to boot cdrom -s then run format, choose the drive and then run format to format the drive? then label it.

3) after booting cdrom run prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s2 and post output.

4) When you are choosing the partition sizes are you giving gb size or choosing doing cylinder to cylinder? Make sure you are not overlapping any cylinders as that can cause corruption.(I am sure you are aware of this as seems you do have knowledge but had to be said)

5)post devalias from OBP.

6) does probe-scsi-all show the drive?

7) interesting it would load the OS.

Chris

 

[blarneyme]

You don't mention the version of OBP, however, this is an Ultra 10 and I'm not sure it will support a 160G drive. Back then drives were typically 4.3G or 9.1G, though you can find spare parts of 20G drives. But again, those were either ATA or EIDE on the Ultra's.

I'm not a work presently to check what types of disks we have in our remaining Ultra 10s that were supposed to be gone years ago, but will likely remain a few more years. Fortunately those things just keep going, just like some of our nearly 20 year old Power hardware. Says something about the architecture, unlike the x86 junk pushed by Dell and HP, but I digress, that is a different subject.

I was going to mention going to the shell and format the disk, but then re-read your post and see you already did that.

I'd still point to the OBP or the disk as mentioned above.

 

[cndcadams]

blarneyme;

I agree and double checked that they never supported scsi drive only ide 20g, 9g, 4g but he says it loads solaris 10 so although it is not a supported drive just the fact it loads the Os has me intrigued. Solaris 10 is supported on it.

He could not label the drive so he may need to format it then label or choose backup label and format drive.

 

[blarneyme]

cncadams,

After reading your reply, I looked again at the OP and see the format and label didn't work which I thought did at the first reading (and second lol). So I do agree with you that it has to be formatted and labeled.

OBP has probably never been updated, so I would do that since the OP is trying to use a 160G scsi disk.

 

[app87k]

Wow, lots of replies, thanks guys. I also forgot to say that I have a PCI USB Host card in this machine so I can use a real persons freeking mouse.

Ok so first off.

"cndcadams"

"1) Is it a Sun OEM drive? Meaning does it have a sun sticker on it."

No it is not an OEM drive. Its just a segate Ultra320 160 GB 10K RPM Drive. But this should not stop it from working, i've seen non-sun drives in other Ultra 10s.


"you said.. I have tried using "format" with "label", which did not work. That is a problem right there. If you can't label you have an issue with the drive."

Yes and no. I should have been more specific. The command executed properly and it said it labeled the disk, however it did not fix the magic number issue.

"2) did you try to boot cdrom -s then run format, choose the drive and then run format to format the drive? then label it."

Yes, this is how I was able to attempt the Label command as openboot does not contain one its self as I am aware. I have also formatted the drive many times to no avail. Though format completed correctly. (and took bloody forever)

"3) after booting cdrom run prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s2 and post output."

I hate you BTW, I had to type all of this, and the web forum messes up the formatting. lol.....:
_________________________________________________________________
/dev/rdsk/c1t10d0s2 (volume :disk0" partition map

Dimensions:
512 bytes/sector
607 sectors/track
8 tracks/cylinder
4856 sectors/cylinders
29525 cylinders
29523 accessible cylinders

Flags:
1: unmountable
10: read-only

Unallocated space:
First Sector Last
Sector Count Sector
0 1048896 1048895

First Sector Last
Partition Tag Flags Sector Count Sector Mount Directory
0 2 00 1048896 16772624 17821519
1 3 01 0 1048896 1048895
2 5 00 0 143363688 143363687
7 8 00 17821520 125537312 143358831
_________________________________________________________________

"4) When you are choosing the partition sizes are you giving gb size or choosing doing cylinder to cylinder? Make sure you are not overlapping any cylinders as that can cause corruption.(I am sure you are aware of this as seems you do have knowledge but had to be said)"

In this respect, everything seems to be okay. The Solaris 10 format and partition utility takes care of this with no issue and auto configures.

"5)post devalias from OBP."

OBP? Sorry, Im taking that to mean OpenBoot? If so, then:

_________________________________________________________________
screen /SUNW,ffb@1e,0
net /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/network@1,1
cdrom /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@2,0:f
disk /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@0,0
disk3 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@3,0
disk2 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@2,0
disk1 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@1,0
disk0 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@0,0
ide /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3
floppy /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/fdthree
ttyb /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se:b
ttya /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se:a
keyboard! /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3083f8:forcemode
keyboard /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3083f8
mouse /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3062f8
name aliases

_________________________________________________________________

"6) does probe-scsi-all show the drive?"

Indeed it does with out issue. It lists the Seagate Ultra320 as exactly what it is. And at the proper location.

"7) interesting it would load the OS."

Yeah, the Solaris 10 Install DVD-ROM boots just fine and installs Solaris 10 with no issues at all tpo the SCSI Disk. It just seems that open boot is not pointed at the disk correctly somehow. I used this same Disk and DVD drive to install Solaris 10 to this system a while back, to the 300 GB IDE Drive I had in it (which was also non-sun seagate). Worked perfectly, was just slow because of ATA-66 PATA cont. onboard.


And for "blarneyme"

"You don't mention the version of OBP, however, this is an Ultra 10 and I'm not sure it will support a 160G drive. Back then drives were typically 4.3G or 9.1G, though you can find spare parts of 20G drives. But again, those were either ATA or EIDE on the Ultra's."

Im sorry, my OpenBoot Version is 3.19 and I know it wont use the full 160 gigs, the Solaris installer takes care of that limitation by partitioning the drive down to a usable size like it did when I had a 300 Gig PATA Drive on the ATA-66 BUS on the motherboard.

"I'm not a work presently to check what types of disks we have in our remaining Ultra 10s that were supposed to be gone years ago, but will likely remain a few more years. Fortunately those things just keep going, just like some of our nearly 20 year old Power hardware. Says something about the architecture, unlike the x86 junk pushed by Dell and HP, but I digress, that is a different subject."

Oh hell yeah, I love this system, it was giving a 64-bit CPU to home level users a good many years before Intel or AMD even thought of it.

"I was going to mention going to the shell and format the disk, but then re-read your post and see you already did that."

Yep!

"I'd still point to the OBP or the disk as mentioned above."

You may be right, I should throw one of the many 8 gig SCSI disks I have lying around into the system to see it the problem is fixed. Ill kind of be sad if it is though. (I really wanted to use my Ultra320 SCSI Disk in it)

More for "cndcadams"

"blarneyme;

I agree and double checked that they never supported scsi drive only ide 20g, 9g, 4g but he says it loads solaris 10 so although it is not a supported drive just the fact it loads the Os has me intrigued. Solaris 10 is supported on it.

He could not label the drive so he may need to format it then label or choose backup label and format drive."

These systems do support SCSI Drives, Ive seen them running them as the boot disk before in person. And read a bunch of guides on the internet that says they are good to use an SCSI disk for OS Drive too. "

http://www.pimpworks.org/sun/ultra10-scsi.html"

as an example.


Ill give the 8 Gig SCSI Disk a try and see what happens. This would be really dumb since I was able to have a 300 Gig PATA Drive in the system before. Maybe I should try an adaptec SCSI controller? Im using the symbios one that came with the box.

Thanks again!

 

[app87k]

Haha, im a retard. The 8.6 GB IBM SCSI drive i wanted to use wont work for a very good reason. Solaris 10 takes 9.20 GB to install. "you don't have enough disk space to install", blah blah. Now i need to get to one of the many 18 GB Seagate Baracuda SCSI drives ive got!

 

[app87k]

Ugh, I dont have any SCSI Disks under 73 Gigs. I just bought three identical 18.0 GB Seagate Ultra320 SCSI 10K RPM Disks on ebay for 9 bucks. Ill have to wait till these get here to proceed. Ill post back later.


Oh, I have one of these SUN PCI/PCI-X Single Board Computers with a 700 MHz X86 CPU on board and 512 RAM, is this in any way worth playing around with trying to get working in my Ultra10 Workstation, and if what would it do?

Thanks guys!

 

[app87k]

Alright mates, my last post here hopefully!

I found an old Quantum Fireball HotSwap Ultra SCSI 9.1 GB Drive in a storage area. I put it into teh workstation!

And.

You guys were right, it seems that the Ultra10 Workstation could not support the 146.0 GB SCSI Disk I was trying to use, even if the partition was set low in size. I was, also correct, in thinking two things. 1, the Ultra10 workstation CAN use an SCSI disk (up to 36 GB I think) as its OS boot disk. 2 the Solaris 10 installer can and does edit the OpenBoot settings to boot properly to any disk you chose to install to during the install wizard! Be it SCSI or IDE.

At this point the workstation boots into Solaris 10 with the Java desktop perfectly! And its much faster! Now once the ones I ordered off ebay get here, I can RAID 0 + 1 two of them and reinstall Solaris again! Hehe!

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[cndcadams]

app87k;

When I mention the scsi drive is not supported that is per the hardware parts list(meaning sun never qualified it) but does not mean it will not work.

you said
No it is not an OEM drive. Its just a segate Ultra320 160 GB 10K RPM Drive. But this should not stop it from working, i've seen non-sun drives in other Ultra 10s.

Yes the non-sun labeled(sticker) drives may work but you have to be able to put a Sun label on it. If it says bad magic number it is not holding the label.


boot the cdrom -s
run format command
choose the drive
choose
type (see if there is any type something like Sun 160GB) if no just choose auto
then label.
quit format then go back in and see if you still get bad magic number

If you still get bad magic number then
choose backup ... assign backup label.
format the drive (again)
and label again.

Make sure you do not see bad magic number.


Chris

 

[cndcadams]

Cool atleast you got that to work.

However I do not think the fact it is 160gb is the issue I think the drive has an issue in cylinder 0 which is not holding the label.

PS you said
Oh, I have one of these SUN PCI/PCI-X Single Board Computers with a 700 MHz X86 CPU on board and 512 RAM, is this in any way worth playing around with trying to get working in my Ultra10 Workstation, and if what would it do?

Not worth using it as it is a pain in the ass and never worked well. It is for windows emulation(you could run xp on it). Did it years ago but don't waste your time with it.

Chris