[rescue] Sparc OS Install over serial

[Scott Newell]

>I'm looking for a way to bootstrap and install any modern OS (preferably
>some flavor of linux) to a SS or Ultra class sparc, but only use the
>serial port - no floppy, cd, network, or hard disk to bootstrap from. My
>console does _not_ need to be on the serial port. Googling has only turned
>up ways of using the serial port as concole during install. I was hoping
>there's a way to pull this off from the prom - does anyone know if this is
>possible?

Sure, why not?  You might do it by first writing a small bootstrap program
in forth to (very slowly!) dump incoming data from the serial port to a
disk partition.  Load one partition with a miniroot install image, and
another partition with the installation sets.  Boot the miniroot and
install into a third partition.

I guess you'd have to code up a filesystem to copy the installation sets
into a partition so that the install program could recognize 'em, right?


newell