[SunHELP] Help I've killed my Ultra 5

[James Lockwood]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Richard Worwood wrote:

> Well, it took a few goes but it ran though a test-all fine, that is if you
> don't count the fact it hung partway through the fest attempt to run the
> command. Then again I had to do a stop-a to get it to the ok prompt which is
> never great.
>
> Is there anyway I can make up a boot disk and re flash the machine. Bearing
> in mind the fact that I have access to no solaris boxes especially sparc
> ones. Do have access to several intel linux boxes though.

First of all, in general you do not need to mess with flashing OpenBoot to
handle larger disk sizes.  This was true for <80GB disks, I do not know
for certain if it is necessary for larger ones (I'm sure Greg Onufer will
pipe up if so).  Later revs of Solaris are necessary for certain disk
sizes.

You can flash OpenBoot with no OS or even a disk connected.  I have always
flashed it by doing a netboot from the OBP install image.  Grab the
flash-update-XXX-latest file and netboot it as you would any OS kernel.
At a minimum this requires the appropriately named inetboot file served by
TFTP, the flash-update file exported via NFS, and either RARP+bootparams
or DHCP set up for the initial phase of the netboot.

Netbooting in a nutshell (toonces is client, orion is server):

orion:/etc% ls -l /usr/local/netboot_sol8_sparc/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot/fla*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     other    1381112 Apr 19  2000 /usr/local/netboot_sol8_sparc/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot/flash-update-Ultra1-latest

(/usr/local/netboot_sol8_sparc/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot is shared ro,anon=0)

orion:/tftpboot% grep toonces /etc/bootparams
toonces  root=orion:/opt/local/netboot_sol8_sparc/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot install=orion:/opt/local/netboot_sol8_sparc boottype=:in rootopts=:rsize=32768
orion:/tftpboot% grep toonces /etc/ethers
8:0:20:23:6b:a1 toonces
orion:/tftpboot% grep toonces /etc/hosts
192.168.1.41 toonces

(this is C0A80129 in hex)

orion:/tftpboot% ls -l C0A80129* inetboot.SUN4U.Solaris_8-1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     other         26 Apr 17  2002 C0A80129 -> inetboot.SUN4U.Solaris_8-1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     other         26 Apr 17  2002 C0A80129.SUN4U -> inetboot.SUN4U.Solaris_8-1
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     other     158592 Apr  2  2000 inetboot.SUN4U.Solaris_8-1

at the ok prompt on toonces:

boot net flash-update-Ultra1-latest

Tweak to taste depending on the requirements of your rarpd or tftpd.  DHCP
config is easy and covered in the Solaris admin docs.  I've booted Suns
from just about every other Unix out there, there's nothing "magic" about
a Solaris boot server other than that the install client scripts do all
the magic for you.

-James