Progress is very slow, if at all.

For reasons that elude me I have been unable to dump the install image
to a secondary scsi disk with dd. Every time I try I get told some bad
things :

# dd if=/cdrom/test/debian_20220328/debian-11.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 bs=2048 count=189529
dd: unexpected short write, wrote 1536 bytes, expected 2048
65725+0 records in
65725+0 records out
#

So that is strange. Perhaps the iso image file is a sparse file with a
hole in it. I doubt that but I will try another method and see what
happens. Really the only way I have been able to do this in the past was
to dd the netinst image to a scsi disk and then boot that disk. When I
get asked where the install media is within the installer I simply point
to a scsi cdrom which *is* the second scsi disk.

Now if I could netboot this thing .. that would be great. Network boot
and serve up the netinst installer image. How cool would that be?


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi,

Dennis Clarke wrote:

# dd if=/cdrom/test/debian_20220328/debian-11.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 bs=2048 count=189529
dd: unexpected short write, wrote 1536 bytes, expected 2048
65725+0 records in
65725+0 records out
So that is strange. Perhaps the iso image file is a sparse file with a
hole in it.

Hardly. Some automat would have to have converted the file to a be
sparse one.

I would rather expect "short write" to be caused by the return value of
a write(2) call being less than the number of submitted bytes.
(It should not happen with a healthy disk device except at the very end
of its capacity.)

The disk address /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 looks like Solaris. So it is no
wonder that i fail to find the dd message in Debian's coreutils.

Maybe it works better or fails with other diagnostic messages if you
use bs=512 and adjust or omit the count= argument.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/29/22 15:48, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

Dennis Clarke wrote:

# dd if=/cdrom/test/debian_20220328/debian-11.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso
of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 bs=2048 count=189529
dd: unexpected short write, wrote 1536 bytes, expected 2048
65725+0 records in
65725+0 records out
So that is strange. Perhaps the iso image file is a sparse file with a
hole in it.

Hardly. Some automat would have to have converted the file to a be
sparse one.

I would rather expect "short write" to be caused by the return value of
a write(2) call being less than the number of submitted bytes.
(It should not happen with a healthy disk device except at the very end
of its capacity.)

The disk address /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 looks like Solaris. So it is no
wonder that i fail to find the dd message in Debian's coreutils.

Maybe it works better or fails with other diagnostic messages if you
use bs=512 and adjust or omit the count= argument.

Have a nice day :)

Trying.

I did try bs=512 and yes the box was running Solaris at the time. There
is no OS on the netra at all so I have to network boot from somewhere to
get a workable shell prompt. It is trivial to netboot Solaris 10 onto
an old netra. So I do that. Then I can run "format -e" and label the two
disks in the machine as typical disks. The device path /dev/rdsk/c_etc
is just the controller and the scsi id data for the drive. Nothing fancy
and it generally just works. At least in the past. I have swapped out a
disk already and I see the exact same error from "dd" regardless.

Now I am trying more stringent methods.

I would really like to just serve up the installer over TFTP/BootP and
get the process going. Good old NFSv3 can serve everything else.


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional


ps: there is no way to boot USB nor a CDROM at all.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 04:30:52PM -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 3/29/22 15:48, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Dennis Clarke wrote:

# dd if=/cdrom/test/debian_20220328/debian-11.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 bs=2048 count=189529
dd: unexpected short write, wrote 1536 bytes, expected 2048
65725+0 records in
65725+0 records out
So that is strange. Perhaps the iso image file is a sparse file with a hole in it.

<snip>

I would really like to just serve up the installer over TFTP/BootP and
get the process going. Good old NFSv3 can serve everything else.

At https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/ch04s05.en.html there is "Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting" in the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide.

Wouldn't that get you going?

Bye,

Joost

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/31/22 14:53, Joost van Baal-Ilić wrote:

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 04:30:52PM -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 3/29/22 15:48, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Dennis Clarke wrote:

# dd if=/cdrom/test/debian_20220328/debian-11.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso >>>> of=/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0 bs=2048 count=189529
dd: unexpected short write, wrote 1536 bytes, expected 2048
65725+0 records in
65725+0 records out
So that is strange. Perhaps the iso image file is a sparse file with a >>>> hole in it.

<snip>

I would really like to just serve up the installer over TFTP/BootP and
get the process going. Good old NFSv3 can serve everything else.

At https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/ch04s05.en.html there is "Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting" in the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide.

Wouldn't that get you going?

Actually it may ... I have to test that as it would be *most*
convenient.

However after I see the error of my ways I hooked up an external scsi
disk to my old Netra and managed to dd the netinst to that just fine.
So while it may be slow it is running fine thus far :

hades# uname -a
Linux hades 5.16.0-6-sparc64 #1 Debian 5.16.18-1 (2022-03-29) sparc64
GNU/Linux

hades# cat /proc/version
Linux version 5.16.0-6-sparc64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc-11
(Debian 11.2.0-18) 11.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.38) #1
Debian 5.16.18-1 (2022-03-29)

hades# cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinux-5.16.0-6-sparc64 root=UUID=dba85bc4-a7fb-42f9-938f-908031ae6ec5 ro verbose net.ifnames=0

I use the net.ifnames=0 option there to get trivial eth0 type interface
names and then modify /etc/network/interfaces as needed.

hades# uptime
22:43:37 up 40 min, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.29, 0.41
hades#

So now I am going to try to compile a custom 5.17 kernel :)


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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