[SPARCbook] My Sparcbook3 adventure (Debian X config?) (long)

[Michael Schwarz]

On Sunday 17 November 2002 11:47 am, David Cantrell wrote:
>
> The good news is that debian doesn't really care what kernel you are
> running.  If you want to be a purist, then you can create a deb package
> containing that kernel and install it 'properly', but that's not necessary.
> On my debian boxes, whether they be x86, sparc or ppc, I don't bother
> keeping the kernel under package manglement.

Yes, I know that.  But RedHat is notorious for patching kernels nine ways from 
Sunday such that you often can't replace a RedHat kernel with one from 
anywhere else.  But of course, I can always keep my original kernel around as 
a fallback.

What I'm really after here is once I install this 2.3.x kernel from 
www.nj-onramp.com (and is that the best way to go?  Was this patch merged in 
such that it is in 2.4.x kernels?  This seems unlikely since I saw this 
particular patched kernel mentioned in the mailing list archive in October of 
this year.), what do I have to do to set up the X server?  When I installed X 
via atp-get, I "guessed" at the configuration, so I'm sure I'm all messed up.  
Any tips on that?  Also, is that particular kernel from that particular place 
what I want to use?  Or do I just want to install a 2.4.x kernel?  (This is 
my first non-Intel Linux box, and I don't assume that just because 2.4.x is 
out and stable for Intel that it is there for Sparc -- although I see Debain 
does have 2.4.x kernel packages for Sparc, so you would think it works, but 
if I do go with the Debian 2.4.x, does the framebuffer work on Sparcbooks?)

Sorry if I'm being over-paranoid, but it comes from the newness of the 
environment (to me).  I know the hardware on my PC's right down to the I/O 
controller reigsters.  I don't know diddly about my Sparcbook and that just 
plain makes me nervous.  I know I can always re-install if I really mess up, 
but even with my 256kbit link, this takes quite a bit of time!

>
> If you have a SCSI CD-ROM drive try installing from that.  If at first you
> don't succeed, see if there's a switch to set the sector size, which Suns
> (and SGIs for that matter, and no doubt others) can be fussy about.

I don't have any SCSI hardware, and I don't have budget for hardware right 
now.  I was pretty pleased with myself for getting net boot working.  PC's 
don't have bootp capable BIOSes, so I never had occasion to set up the server 
side of a bootp setup before.  (I'm a programmer mainly, I'm only a sysadmin 
at home, so I have used plenty of net-booted workstations, but I've never 
managed the server side before).

-- 
Michael Schwarz
http://www.multitool.net
mschwarz at multitool.net