Sparc

The Sparcstation install server at Ludd
To install Debian GNU/Linux on a Sparcstation over a network, rarpd and tftpd are needed on a server. The rarpd assigns the machine an IP-address based on the machines MAC-address. The tftpd feeds a boot image to the machine based on the machines IP-address. Once this is done Debian installer is self sustaining and the install server is no longer needed.

• rarpd
To determine what IP address to assign each booting machine, it looks for the MAC-address in /etc/ethers, and then matches the name found there to the list found in /etc/hosts. rarpd logs to /var/log/daemon.log.
• atftpd
Each booting machine requests a file based on their IP-address. If a file with that name is found in /tftpboot it is uploaded to the machine. The install server runs atftpd as tftp-daemon since it provides detailed logging with the default settings. atftpd logs to /var/log/atftpd.log.

The above process can be somewhat automated through the rarp2ethers script. It still depends on the log trace of a failed boot to work however.

The script has been put in the crontab on the installserver to run every five minutes. So to install a machine, attempt a network boot, which initially will fail, but within 5 minutes the cron should update the files and the machine should boot. The script will assign IP-addresses from the 10.0.1.101-109 range, so they will not conflict with the port-number based assignment on the Ludd-10-net. The address is only used for retrieving the boot image, once the installer asks for network configuration, please use settings as per the sign above the hub.

Running Debian on a sparcstation
Pretty much everything should work by default, however, the 1GB or 500MB drives readily available pose certain limitations on the number of packages that can be installed. Preferably do not add any extra packages through tasksel or dselect during the install, but only later once the system is up and running. Once the system is running the packages libc6-sparc64, libc6-dev-sparc64 and lib64gcc1 can be removed as they only should contain 64-bit related stuff, not needed on the 32-bit sparcstation.

Even the slower versions are fast enough to play mp3s, install support for the cs4231 soundchip and even xmms will run (the mpg123 textmode player will also work just fine).

The X Window System works, the graphics should be left to autodetection as per the following XF86Config. KDE and Gnome will run, but slowly, and they consume quite a lot of diskspace. If X is run on a Type 5 Swedish layout keyboard the key to the right of left shift will be dead, but it can be fixed with the following xmodmap-debian.

A machine with a 1GB drive should have enough space to compile the kernel if wanted. Compile, then add the new kernel to /etc/silo.conf and run silo. My own kernel can be downloaded here, it includes sound support.

You can download the Opera webbrowser for Linux sparc from www.Opera.no. An installed system with the base packages (excluding the 64bit libraries), X, the XMMS mp3-player and Opera uses about 300MB. The C/C++ development environment from tasksel adds another 20MB.

OpenBSD
There is limited support for OpenBSD for sparc aswell. A full install uses 320MB disk.