Tuesday I had a question about the remote installation of Sun OS 4.1.1.:

> ... we got an error message:

> get_software_info: '/etc/ifconfig le0 mickey -trailers up 2>>/etc/install/suninstall.log' failed.

>

> After that, we found in /etc/install/suninstall.log:

> /etc/ifconfig: P^Gn^X(M-^L)^O(M-()^Gn^X^N: not found

...

> /etc/ifconfig: syntax error at line 11: `P^Gn^X(M-^L)^S' unexpected

> get_software_info: '/etc/ifconfig le0 mickey -trailers up 2>>/etc/install/suninstall.log' failed.

> failed to assign software information.

Even though I didn't get my question back yet, I got four replies,

all of them stating that we are using the wrong binary (sun3 ?).

But we have installed two other SPARCs with these tapes (directly) !

After this hint, we did some hacking (installed the miniroot in /dev/sd0b, booting as client

and examined the 'executables' (after mounting sd0b): file ifconfig: data !!).

So we copied the files from the server into the miniroot and all seemed to

work well (suninstall succeeded).

But we weren't able to reboot the system: after the initial startup messages:

...

vmunix: root on sd0a fstype 4.2

vmunix: swap on sd0b fstype spec size 14070K

vmunix: dump on sd0b fstype spec size 14056K

the computer hang (only L1-A worked).

Something must have failed during the copying of the miniroot from tape to the

server or from server to client (no idea, what :-(.

We started the installation again, but now we got on the client:

>b le() -a

Booting from: le(0,0,0) -a

got error packet: error code 1 message: file not found

In the afternoon the client startet without this error message,

but again failed to work with the miniroot.

Meanwise we got a CD-ROM from Sun, so we used this to install the new OS.

Then we compared the miniroot from the tape and the miniroot from the CD:

there were no differences !

Okay, we tried the next SPARCs: One booted well over the net and the installation

succeeded without any problem !

Another was not able to boot from ethernet (error message see above).

There seems to be a problem with our ethernet (but this doesn't occur

during normal operation !).

Now we install our remaining SPARCs directly from CD.

Many thanks to:

carlo@white.stanford.edu

Alain Brossard EPFL-SIC/SII <brossard@sasun1.epfl.SWITCH.arcom.ch>

Per Hedeland <per@erix.ericsson.se>

Badri Pillai <badri@ecrc.de>

Thanks a lot !

Claus Assmann

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