5.2.1 mini-ISO fails to boot on U450

[Joerg Wunsch]

As Joerg Wunsch wrote:

> I found a FreeBSD 5.1 boot CD-ROM, and it gets me a few more messages
> on the serial console but will eventually fail similarly:
> 
> Boot device: /pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 2/disk at 6,0:f  File and args: 
>  
> >> FreeBSD/sparc64 boot block
>    Boot path:   /pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 2/disk at 6,0:f
>    Boot loader: /boot/loader
> Console: OpenFirmware console
> Boot path set to /pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 2/disk at 6,0:a
> 
> FreeBSD/sparc64 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.0
> (fenner at sparkle.attlabs.net, Tue May  6 15:11:35 PDT 2003)
> bootpath="/pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 2/disk at 6,0:a"
> 
> [here the `twiddle' is spinning]
> 
> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf 
> Fatal SCSI error  at script address 8 Illegal instruction
> Drive not ready

No idea what this might have been.

Thanks to Marius Strobl's documentation pointer, I've been able to set
up a netboot server for the machine, and installed it that way.
Unlike booting off the CD-ROM, booting off a normal disk works, and I
can also access the CD-ROM.  Would be interesting why booting off the
CD-ROM does not work for FreeBSD.

Booting the miniroot system didn't work either (``The file just loaded
does not appear to be executable.'').

I notice that the bootstrap process while netbooting is abysmally
slow.  Ethereal only records NFS requests (like for loader.conf etc.)
every 30 or so seconds, between these calls the machine seems to be
idle.  Why's that?  It's as dog slow as booting Solaris over the
net...

Btw., I had to fix rarpd(8) in order to work on interfaces with
multiple IP addresses assigned.  I guess the sparc64 community would
be the #1 candidate consumer of rarpd, so I thought I let you
know. ;-)

-- 
J"org Wunsch					       Unix support engineer
joerg_wunsch at interface-systems.de        http://www.interface-systems.de/~j/