9.2-RC1 sparc install via network problems

[Marius Strobl]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2013 at 07:36:40PM +0200, Michiel Boland wrote:
> Hi. I have some problems installing 9.2-RC1 on sparc64 via the network
> 
> I have a dhcp server, and an NFS server that exports the disc1 ISO.
> 
> Relevant portions of dhcpd.conf:
> 
>     filename "boot/loader";
>     option root-path "<ip-address-of-nfs-server>:/cdrom";
> 
> The boot/loader was copied from the install image. The tftpboot directory is 
> otherwise empty. (So no loader.conf etc.)

Do you also have 'next-server' in there? I'm buffled how TFTPing
the loader could work without one ...

> 
> First I tried booting an Ultra10. That paniced immediately
> 
> isp0: <Qlogic ISP 1020/1040 PCI SCSI Adapter> port 0x1000-0x10ff mem 
> 0x2808000-0x2808fff at device 4.0 on pci3
> isp0: invalid NVRAM header
> isp1: <Qlogic ISP 1020/1040 PCI SCSI Adapter> port 0x2000-0x20ff mem 
> 0x2900000-0x2900fff at device 2.0 on pci2
> panic: trap: data access error (kernel)
> cpuid = 0
> KDB: stack backtrace:
> #0 0xc08588b4 at trap+0x554
> Uptime: 1s
> 
> This may be a hardware thing so I did not pursue this further. Maybe Ultra10 is 
> no longer supported, I don't know. (Ultra10s are crap anyway :)

U10 are still supported, why should they have been dropped? :)
In fact, the 9.2 images have been tested on a U10 before they were
published. I also found an ISP 1040 card, which works just fine
here.
So this indeed could be a hardware problem causing a PCI access to
fail, which typically causes very strange backtraces like the
incomplete one above.

> 
> Next I tried netbooting a V-120. That at least did not panic, but instead of 
> starting the installer it produced this message on the console
> 
> cd0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present
> Trying to mount root from cd9660:/dev/iso9660/FREEBSD_INSTALL [ro]...
> mountroot: waiting for device /dev/iso9660/FREEBSD_INSTALL ...
> Mounting from cd9660:/dev/iso9660/FREEBSD_INSTALL failed with error 19.

So far, that's expected as you seem to also have copied over the
/etc/fstab from disc1.

> Trying to mount root from nfs: []...
> 
> At which point all I get is a single-user shell.
> 
> Is installing via the network supported at all with the new bsd installer? Any
> magic loader options I need to get this to work?
> 

According to the /etc/rc.local that ends up on the ISO 9660 file
system of the release images, netbooted installing indeed was
thought of when these were switched to bsdinstall(8). Given
that just copying over that one file to a NFS root properly
fires up bsdinstall(8) after booting here and given that your
netboot environment apparently also works just fine - except you
refer to the mountroot prompt as single-user shell -, I've no
idea what could be going wrong in your case ...

Marius