U60 needs two tries to boot 8.3 UFS/ZFS?

[Kurt Lidl]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2013 at 09:14:10PM -0500, Scott Newell wrote:
> I'm trying to do a 8.3-release UFS boot/ZFS root setup on an Ultra 60 
> (2*300 MHz, 2GB, 2*78 GB disks).  I can boot into a standard FreeBSD, 
> OpenBSD, or Debian install, but not this ZFS install.  At least not 
> the first time.

[ deleted details of getting 8.3 installed ]

> Any thoughts?  Thanks!

Well, offhand, I'd think that trying an old release like 8.3
isn't going to work as well as something more modern, like 9.1,
at least as far as ZFS is concerned.

I've had great success running 9.1 on a variety of sparc64 machines.
The ZFS in 8.3 worked, but since there wasn't sparc64 boot support
for ZFS until 9.1, you had to run a hybrid system.

Since it's a new install, you'd probably be better served by trying
to get 9.1 running.

-Kurt