Thank you all who responded...
Robert Pasken
Gary Richardson
Dan A. Zambon
Rick Wightman
David Moline
Roland Hamblin
Birger A. Wathne
David Fetrow
The problem we had seems to be due to an old version of EEPROM.
Check out the solution offered by David Moline...
Sorry for the delay in posting the summary. I did not get any responses
to my submission until after one week, apparently due to a delay in the
posting. By that time I had done the upgrade by building a sun4 client
on one of our IPX's and booting the 4/110 diskless. The client install
(on the sun4c IPX) procedure was painful because the add_client utility
would not acknowledege the existence of a sun4 kernel arch on the CDROM,
but that's grist for another post! Anyway, with the 4/110 booted diskless
it worked pretty much like the manual said it would. Thanks for all your
help.
Here is the original posting:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a Sun 4/110 series workstation running SunOS 4.1 which I was
attempting to upgrade to 4.1.3 using the CDROM installation tools.
I have upgraded a couple of SparcStations using the same equipment.
I install the CDROM (ID #6) on the SCSI bus, along with the external
SCSI disk/tape pack, where the bus terminates.
At the monitor prompt I type:
> b sd(0,30,1) # this is what I should use on a sun4 (says the doc!)
The various scsi peripherals make some grunt and groan a bit, after a
minute the system responds with something like:
scsi-select failed
...
On a Sparc the command b sd(0,6,2) did the job. On this 4/110 I can still
boot off the SCSI disk while the CD-ROM is attached, using the default
setup and typing:
> b
The adapter we have is "sw", described as 'SCSI wierd' in the kernel config,
the sr0 device is listed in the messages and config file.
Sorry, I don't remember the version of boot prom, but I recall seeing the
year 1988 while watching the self-test.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the fix I liked the best (a real spirit of hacking here!).
Wish I got it before I built that client. Thanks for the trick.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Moline writes:
> From: David Moline <drm@gaia.gcs.oz.au>
>
>
> I think the problem you are having is related to the boot rom version on
> your 4/110. Since booting the "regulation" way doesn't work, try this.
>
> 1. Set SCSI id of your CD to be 0 (change your disk so you don't conflict with SCSI id's).
> 2. Boot off the CD with >b sd(0,0,1)
> 3. After the kernel is read in and has begun to display the SunOS banner
> and probe etc., abort the machine (make sure that it hasn't tried to probe the SCSI bus yet).
> 4. Turn off the CD drive and set its SCSI id back to 6.
> 5. Turn off your disk drive and change the SCSI id of your disk back to 0.
> 6. Turn on the CD and disk drive, and let the machine resume booting
> (ie type c at the rom prompt.
> 7. Follow all normal instructions to install the OS.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Fetrow writes:
> From: David Fetrow <fetrow@biostat.washington.edu>
>
> Early 4/110's PROM can't handle CD-ROM boots. Period (according to Sun).
> You should be able to make a hetero-boot server out of one of the SPARCstations,
> boot it diskless, and install from the SPARCstation though.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Birger A. Wathne writes:
> From: Birger.Wathne@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne)
>
> I don't remember the exact numbers anymore, but some old 4/110's with
> old boot-proms can't boot from CD. You'll have to upgrade the prom's,
> or extract the miniroot manually... If the disk you want to install to
> is your current system disk, you'll have to move it to another host and
> manually place the miniroot image into the swap partition (Can't
> remember the details. I did it for a Sun3 once). Then move the disk
> back, and boot from the swap partition.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Hamblin EOS writes:
> From: Roland Hamblin EOS <rolandh@eos.co.uk>
>
> I am afraid that this may not bee too much help, but we have a 4/110 here, and
> it is running 4.1.3, loaded off a cd-rom. We also have a 'SCSI Wierd' adaptor,
> and as far as I can remember, we had no problems upgrading.
>
> Have you tried going to 'new mode' at the boot prompt (I think it should accept
> it) and just doing a 'boot cdrom'?
>
I didn't have a 'new mode' ;-( must be old ROMS
> Yes, it is possible to boot off CD-rom, and I think that if you try the above,
> it might work.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Wightman writes:
> From: "Rick Wightman" <wightman@jupiter.csd.unb.ca.>
>
> Ted:
> Had same problem last year. Problem is your EEPROMs are not current enough. You
> need a revison level of at least 2.8 . Check cold boot screen for current level.
> The EEPROMs are a user installable kit. This caused me some grief, but I'd never
> taken the guts out of any machine before, so chances are I wasn't as careful as
> I should have been.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan A. Zambon writes:
> From: dzambon@afit.af.mil (Dan A. Zambon)
>
> I am trying to
> upgrade to 4.1.3. Sun tells me that I need an EEPROM upgrade. Matter
> of fact, they found the parts for me and am awaiting my $150.
>
> Since I do not have the EEPROMs yet to test, I cannot tell you if they do, in
> fact, work. I also must tell you that it took a LONG time for Sun
> to come up with the parts.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Richardson writes:
> From: gpr@proteon.com (Gary Richardson)
>
> If you want to upgrade to 4.1.3, attach the cdrom to one of your
> sun4c machines (that's on the same net) mount the cdrom. Then get
> your 4/110 into single user mode and nfs mount the cdrom from the sun4c
> onto the 110. Then you can do the sunupgrade.
>
> This is all explained in the installation manual for 4.1.{2,3}. If
> you don't have it, let me know and I'll try and write something
> up for you.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Pasken writes:
> From: pasken@newton.slu.edu (Robert Pasken)
> Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 09:02:06 CDT
> Subject: Re: can't boot 4/100 off CDROM
>
> The Sun 4/110's don't have the necessary code in the ROMS to handle
> the responses from the CD-ROM. You will need a Sparc 1 or greater and use
> the remote installation process to get the package to work. I beat my head
> against a wall for a month on this until I saw a note in sun-managers about
> this I don't have the original mail, but it said that you had to use the
> remote install procedure from CD-ROMS.
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ted Asocks tra@lick.ucsc.edu
Systems Administrator VOICE: (408)459-4020
UCO/Lick Observatory FAX: (408)426-3115
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:07:54 CDT