On 2021-11-02 5:36 p.m., Ted Bullock wrote:
Reporting an issue that is causing my SunBlade 100 (ultrasparc64) workstation to be unable too boot.
I've identified the malfunctioning component that is causing installs after 6.7 to fail for this system, although I'm not certain yet which patch broke things for this system.
ofwboot on sparc64 was altered between versions 6.7 and 6.8 in such a way that it breaks booting from hdd (wd device). The bootblock itself or part 1 of the boot seems fine but something causes the hdd to be unreadable to the kernel when loaded with the phase 2 bootloaders.
I've installed the ofwboot version from Nov 3 snapshot into a working 6.7 install and was able to reproduce the same failure mode that I'm seeing on -current today with a fresh install.
Further, I tried booting a 6.7 install with the kernel from the Nov. 3 snapshot and the system boots normally with the -current kernel.
I'm not clear which patch broke the bootloader for the hdd install but there don't seem to be many between 6.7 and 6.8 that impacted ofwboot.
I'm guessing that there aren't many users running with a standard IDE hard drive on sparc64 anymore so the failure mode hasn't been caught or at least looked into. I don't feel particularly competent at the moment to diagnose what is causing the bug in ofwboot itself, so I'm hoping someone can/will spare a bit of their valuable time to help identify the problem.
-- Ted Bullock <[email protected]>
