I'd like to know if there's a relatively easy way to make a bootable CD for
SPARC platform.

Specifically, I want to wipe the hard drives on some servers. I've used the
BCWipe program on Windows before and was pleased with it, so I thought I'd
try the UNIX version. I've downloaded, compiled, and installed the program
on an old SparcStation I have for projects. Works great.

Now I was thinking that I'd like to put the BCWipe executable on a bootable
CD for nuking these servers. That way, I don't need to worry about having an
operable Solaris installation on the system. Rather, I could just boot cdrom
and run BCWipe directly, which would streamline things considerably.

I found a Sun Blueprint which seems to describe the process:
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0301/BuildBoot.pdf
and also another tutorial:
http://mah.everybody.org/docs/bootab...om-for-solaris
But quite honestly, both are a bit over my head. (Although I've used Solaris
a bit, this is my first foray into system administration!)

I've also tried booting from the Solaris 8 Installation CD and then swapping
to a CD with BCWipe on it. I boot from the CD and say no when asked if I
want to format the hard drive. This returns me to a shell prompt. I was
thinking I could then eject cdrom
and replace it with the other CD. But I just get a "no such file or
directory" error message.

Ideally, if I could just take the Solaris 8 Installation CD and add BCWipe
to it, I could use that to wipe then reformat the drives.

I should add that my SparcStation 5 doesn't have a CD burner, so I'd need to
create an .iso image I could burn on another machine.

Any suggestions you might have are appreciated!

"Steven Endres" <stevenendres@removethis.comcast.net> wrote in message
news:8q-dnUyfbf-WGmjYnZ2dnUVZ_uiknZ2d@comcast.com...
> I'd like to know if there's a relatively easy way to make a bootable CD
for
> SPARC platform.
>
> Specifically, I want to wipe the hard drives on some servers. I've used
the
> BCWipe program on Windows before and was pleased with it, so I thought I'd
> try the UNIX version. I've downloaded, compiled, and installed the program
> on an old SparcStation I have for projects. Works great.
>
> Now I was thinking that I'd like to put the BCWipe executable on a
bootable
> CD for nuking these servers. That way, I don't need to worry about having
an
> operable Solaris installation on the system. Rather, I could just boot
cdrom
> and run BCWipe directly, which would streamline things considerably.
>
> I found a Sun Blueprint which seems to describe the process:
> http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0301/BuildBoot.pdf
> and also another tutorial:
> http://mah.everybody.org/docs/bootab...om-for-solaris
> But quite honestly, both are a bit over my head. (Although I've used
Solaris
> a bit, this is my first foray into system administration!)
>
> I've also tried booting from the Solaris 8 Installation CD and then
swapping
> to a CD with BCWipe on it. I boot from the CD and say no when asked if I
> want to format the hard drive. This returns me to a shell prompt. I was
> thinking I could then eject cdrom
> and replace it with the other CD. But I just get a "no such file or
> directory" error message.
>
> Ideally, if I could just take the Solaris 8 Installation CD and add BCWipe
> to it, I could use that to wipe then reformat the drives.
>
> I should add that my SparcStation 5 doesn't have a CD burner, so I'd need
to
> create an .iso image I could burn on another machine.
>
> Any suggestions you might have are appreciated!
>

Okay, I've found these directions that seem to be working for the most part:
http://clue.eng.iastate.edu/uberjs/p...BootableCD.htm

Everything's fine until the last step. At first mkisofs complained about an
"unrecognized option '-sparc-boot'", so I dropped that option just to see
what happens. Without that option it says "Invalid
mode -sol8.s1,sol8.s2,sol8.s3,sol8.s4,sol8.s5". Thus far I've been unable to
resolve the issue.

Any ideas?

>

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:31:21 -0600
"Steven Endres" <stevenendres@removethis.comcast.net> wrote:

> "Steven Endres" <stevenendres@removethis.comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:8q-dnUyfbf-WGmjYnZ2dnUVZ_uiknZ2d@comcast.com...
> > I'd like to know if there's a relatively easy way to make a
> > bootable CD
> for
> > SPARC platform.
<snip>

Hi
What about this link?
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/...oot_cdrom.html

--
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 10.0 x86_64 Kernel 2.6.16.27-0.9-smp
up 19:03, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.07, 0.03

In article <V_adnVFU3e9rJ2jYnZ2dnUVZ_tCtnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Steven Endres <stevenendres@removethis.comcast.net> wrote:

>Okay, I've found these directions that seem to be working for the most part:
>http://clue.eng.iastate.edu/uberjs/p...BootableCD.htm
>
>Everything's fine until the last step. At first mkisofs complained about an
>"unrecognized option '-sparc-boot'", so I dropped that option just to see
>what happens. Without that option it says "Invalid
>mode -sol8.s1,sol8.s2,sol8.s3,sol8.s4,sol8.s5". Thus far I've been unable to
>resolve the issue.

Which version of mkisofs are you using?

Which command line?

get the latest source:

ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/

and read the official FAQ in mkisofs/README.sparcboot

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

"Joerg Schilling" <js@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:55r9ioF25uomfU1@mid.dfncis.de...
> In article <V_adnVFU3e9rJ2jYnZ2dnUVZ_tCtnZ2d@comcast.com>,
> Steven Endres <stevenendres@removethis.comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >Okay, I've found these directions that seem to be working for the most
part:
> >http://clue.eng.iastate.edu/uberjs/p...BootableCD.htm
> >
> >Everything's fine until the last step. At first mkisofs complained about
an
> >"unrecognized option '-sparc-boot'", so I dropped that option just to see
> >what happens. Without that option it says "Invalid
> >mode -sol8.s1,sol8.s2,sol8.s3,sol8.s4,sol8.s5". Thus far I've been unable
to
> >resolve the issue.
>
> Which version of mkisofs are you using?
>
> Which command line?
>
> get the latest source:
>
> ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/
>
> and read the official FAQ in mkisofs/README.sparcboot
>
> --
> EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
> js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
> schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
> URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

Okay, I've followed the instructions Malcom provided here:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/...oot_cdrom.html

Sorry it took me so long to reply to these helpful posts. In the interest of
following the instructions exactly, I invested the time to download and
install Solaris 9 on my SparcStation 5. Following the instructions was then
straightforward. However, the CD image generated by this process does not
work correctly.

When I boot the SS5 using the CD I made, I get the error
Bad magic number in disk label
Can't open disk label package

Therefore I conclude I did something wrong in building my CD image. This
conclusion is further supported by an error encountered when I burned the
CD. Specifically, when I burn the image (using Nero on a Windows machine, as
my SS5 doesn't write CDs), I get the message "Foreign Image File: The
entered block size does not correspond to the image length. The block size
may be wrong. Do you want to correct the value or ignore the problem?" I
tried correcting the problem, but wasn't able to find any settings Nero
would accept. Therefore, to make a CD I selected Ignore. So Nero seems to
have a problem with the .iso file as well.

Here are the steps I followed. All caps labels refer to the sections in the
original instructions:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/...oot_cdrom.html

CREATING THE VANILLA IMAGE:
Followed the directions. Used the Solaris 9 9/05 Installation CD as the
source.
Question: In the step where you do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/export/cdimage/new_s1.img bs=512 count=1228800
how does one know what the count should be? Is 1228800 suitable for most
applications or do I need to calculate this value in some way? (I just used
1228800.)

INSTALLING PACKAGED SOFTWARE:
Skipped. I was not adding any packaged software.

INSTALLING NON-PACKAGED SOFTWARE:
The make install command for BCWipe installs two files:
/usr/bin/bcwipe (the binary, 57148 bytes)
/usr/man/man1/bcwipe.1 (the man page, 3234bytes)

So I copied these two files to the corresponding subdirectories (which
already existed) within the new_s1 directory:
/export/cdimage/new_s1/usr/bin/bcwipe
/export/cdimage/new_s1/usr/man/man1/bcwipe.1

HANDLING CONFIGURATION AND TEMPORARY FILES:
Skipped. AFAIK, not needed for what I'm trying to do.

MODIFYING THE STARTUP PROCESS:
Skipped. Although I'd like my disk to boot and drop out to the shell as this
section describes, my /sbin doesn't have a sysconfig script. I did read
through some of the other files (startup, suninstall, etc) and couldn't find
where suninstall gets called from.

BURNING THE IMAGE:
Followed the instructions to create the .iso file. With Solaris 9 now on my
SS5, I didn't have any problem with the mkisofs step, as I did previously
with Solaris 8. FTP'd into the SS5 from my Windows machine and used get to
retreive the file. (It selected ASCII mode for the transfer; maybe it should
be binary?) Burned the image using Nero, with the errors decribed above.

One other point, the SS5 reports a file size of 635023360 bytes. The FTP
program says "Opening ASCII mode data connection for bcwipe.iso (635023360
bytes)" but then says "638591851 bytes received in 2110.37Seconds
302.60Kbytes/sec"-one more byte. I'm guessing the last byte signals the end
of transfer. But then Windows Explorer reports a size of 638591851 bytes and
"size on disk" of 638595072 bytes.

Any suggestions? Thanks so much for the help; I really appreciate it...

On Mar 14, 7:22 pm, "Steven Endres"
<stevenend...@removethis.comcast.net> wrote:

> One other point, the SS5 reports a file size of 635023360 bytes. The FTP
> program says "Opening ASCII mode data connection for bcwipe.iso (635023360
> bytes)" but then says "638591851 bytes received in 2110.37Seconds
> 302.60Kbytes/sec"-one more byte. I'm guessing the last byte signals the end
> of transfer. But then Windows Explorer reports a size of 638591851 bytes and
> "size on disk" of 638595072 bytes.

Pure insanity to ftp a binary file in ascii mode.. With some clients
that the default mode.
Type bin before you transfer - just to be sure.. man ftp

"gerryt" <lepsysinc@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1173926806.176382.124460@o5g2000hsb.googlegro ups.com...
> On Mar 14, 7:22 pm, "Steven Endres"
> <stevenend...@removethis.comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > One other point, the SS5 reports a file size of 635023360 bytes. The FTP
> > program says "Opening ASCII mode data connection for bcwipe.iso
(635023360
> > bytes)" but then says "638591851 bytes received in 2110.37Seconds
> > 302.60Kbytes/sec"-one more byte. I'm guessing the last byte signals the
end
> > of transfer. But then Windows Explorer reports a size of 638591851 bytes
and
> > "size on disk" of 638595072 bytes.
>
> Pure insanity to ftp a binary file in ascii mode.. With some clients
> that the default mode.
> Type bin before you transfer - just to be sure.. man ftp
>
>

Indeed. Well, maybe not so much insanity as overwhelming fatigue...

I retransferred the file in binary mode and all is well.

Thanks to all for your help and suggestions.

Steven