installing Solaris back onto ultra after FreeBSD

[Steve Rikli]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 08:10:36PM -0500, Ansar Mohammed wrote:
> Format is core-dumping :)

I think I've seen that before, though it may have been something other
than a FreeBSD disk label.

In any case Royce's explanation is probably still correct; what I did
in that situation (i.e. unable to use 'format') was put the disk in
another Ultra, 'dd' over the first few megabytes of the disk just to
wipe out the existing label, and then try 'format' again after putting
it back in the original machine w/Solaris boot CD etc.

IIRC the absence of a recognizeable <anything> disk label was enough
to let the Solaris 'format' put a new label of its own on the disk.

I don't recall if a Solaris boot CD has 'dd' or something else included
to otherwise wipe out the disk label -- maybe someone else knows an
alternate trick, especially if you don't have a spare Ultra to work
on the disk.

If the disk you're hoping to re-install onto is still bootable(?) you
may even be able to use it to destroy itself.  :-)

Cheers,
sr.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Royce Williams [mailto:royce at alaska.net] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 8:09 PM
> To: Ansar Mohammed
> Cc: freebsd-sparc64 at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: installing Solaris back onto ultra after FreeBSD
> 
> Ansar Mohammed wrote, on 2/5/2009 3:52 PM:
> > For some reason when I try to reinstall Solaris on my Ultra, after
> > installing FreeBSD, the install hangs when it tries to write to disk. Has
> > anyone seen this before?
> 
> Hmm ... sounds like you didn't get an error - 'bad magic', 'label is
> corrupt' - anything like that?
> 
> You may need to rewrite the disk label from a Solaris boot CD or other
> mechanism. Caveat: it's been a looong time since I've done this, am
> doing this from memory (and a little Googling).
> 
> Use the 'format' command to view the current labels.  If I recall
> correctly, you have to use 'format -e' (expert mode), select the drive
> in question, select 'label', and select SMI and then format the drive.
> 
> Some more info - search for EFI here:
> 
>     dlc.sun.com/pdf/817-5093/817-5093.pdf
> 
> 
> Some other possibly useful threads:
> 
>     http://www.webservertalk.com/message1248306.html
> 
> 
> Listers: is this covered in a FAQ somewhere?
> 
> Royce
> 
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-- 
|| Steve Rikli             |||                                         ||
|| Systems Administrator   ||| How can something that is almost 3 MB   ||
|| Genyosha Networks       ||| in size be called a "kernel"?           ||
|| sr at genyosha.net         |||                                         ||