Hi all

I'm trying to boot from a tape on a UltraSparc 10 machine

I'm sure I can boot Linux from a tape (while also loading the rootfs
from it too).

I saw that in documentation that OpenBoot supports booting from a tape,
eventhough Solaris currently seems to not support it.

so I decided to make a try, with a simple test:

+ put a Linux kernel image (uncompressed form) in the begining of /dev/rmt/0ln

+ defined a devalias for the SCSI DAT (DDS1) tape device with

nvalias tape [...]

+ issued a "boot tape"

Then the OpenBios fails booting the device and says: "can't rewind tape"

Even this can't be done in Solaris I supose the OpenBios support for tape
boot is there...

I suposse just specific people from sun.com can answer this...

Any comment/suggestion will be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

Ulisses

Debian GNU/Linux: a dream come true
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On Monday 10 November 2003 8:53 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin
ulisses@pusa.i.hate.spam.informat.uv.es wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I'm trying to boot from a tape on a UltraSparc 10 machine
>
> I'm sure I can boot Linux from a tape (while also loading the rootfs
> from it too).
>
> I saw that in documentation that OpenBoot supports booting from a tape,
> eventhough Solaris currently seems to not support it.

Old OBPs supported booting from DC600 tapes on some ancient machines
waaaay back in the days of SunOS 4.x.
It is now upsupported and AFAIK unmaintained.

The best way to install an OS is via the network.
For Linux TILO is your friend.


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Hi Chris

First of all thanks for your reply

Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
> On Monday 10 November 2003 8:53 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin
[...]
> Old OBPs supported booting from DC600 tapes on some ancient machines
> waaaay back in the days of SunOS 4.x.

I understand here that, even when this feature was supported in SunOS,
the tape must to be a specific model...

> It is now upsupported and AFAIK unmaintained.

I would like to hear a confirmation from sun.com

(how to ask that?)

> The best way to install an OS is via the network.
> For Linux TILO is your friend.

Thanks for the tip, I wanted to play with the tape ;-)

regards

Ulisses

Debian GNU/Linux: a dream come true
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Computers are useless. They can only give answers." Pablo Picasso

---> Visita http://www.valux.org/ para saber acerca de la <---
---> Asociación Valenciana de Usuarios de Linux <---

In article <boretm$qf5$1@peque.uv.es>,
<ulisses@i.hate.spam.pusa.informat.uv.es> wrote:

> Hi Chris
>
> First of all thanks for your reply
>
> Chris Newport <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
> > On Monday 10 November 2003 8:53 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin
> [...]
> > Old OBPs supported booting from DC600 tapes on some ancient machines
> > waaaay back in the days of SunOS 4.x.
>
> I understand here that, even when this feature was supported in SunOS,
> the tape must to be a specific model...
>
> > It is now upsupported and AFAIK unmaintained.
>
> I would like to hear a confirmation from sun.com
>
> (how to ask that?)
>
> > The best way to install an OS is via the network.
> > For Linux TILO is your friend.

The only way you'll get "confirmation from Sun" is by paying for it
through a support contract. Contact your support center and log a call.
Ask for it to be escalated up the support chain.

Failing that, here's a post from some time ago talking about the
unsupported bootable tape feature that you can buy from Sun Professional
Software services:

> Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 11:03:29 +0100 (BST) From: Tony Walton - Sun
> Enterprise Services UK <Tony.Walton@Sun.COM> Reply-To: Tony Walton - Sun
> Enterprise Services UK <Tony.Walton@Sun.COM> Subject: Re: Booting from tape
>
> Michael Vilain " wrote:
> >
> >In article <tgift8sot8cc8a@corp.supernews.com>,
> >"David" <dgutierr27@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Why not use JumpStart to do the same task?
> >>
> >>"Mark Castagna" <mfc@unique-inc.com> wrote in message
> >>"news:3B09323C.A84C434D@unique-inc.com...
> >>>Is it possible? What utility is used, I'm thinking dd but, not really
> >>>certain. The idea is to make a bootable image and be able to dump
> >>>the entire image from tape to disk.
> >>>
> >>>Has anyone out here done something like this. Your help is
> >>>greatly appreciated.
> >
> >I posted here a couple months back that booting from tape was not possible
> >from the Sparc systems. Their boot proms didn't support the tape device
> >nor did the boot code.
> >
> >A SUN employee told me that it can be done but requires special boot
> >proms which SUN Professional Software Services did produce for a
> >customer who required this feature. He did not reply further when I
> >asked about who to contact about this code. It's still owned by SUN
> >and they're not about to give it away without mucho bucks.
> >
> >If you have such bucks, wave them in front of a SUN sales rep's face.
> >You may get your wish. Otherwise, boot off of CD. Restore from backups.
>
> Hmmm. I'm not sure if I'm the Sun employee in question, but I certainly sent
> this information to *somebody*.
>
> Tape booting used to be a "consulting special" from a part of Sun called
> Opcom (I forget what Opcom stands for, I guess it's lost in the mists of
> time). Opcom are now known as Americas Customer Engineering (ACE). They have
> a website at http://ace.canada.sun.com - from that site:
>
> How to Contact Americas Customer Engineering
>
> ACE Mailing Address:
>
> Americas Customer Engineering
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> 140 Renfrew Drive, Suite 206
> Markham, Ontario, CANADA L3R 6B3
>
> ACE Main Phone:
>
> 1-800-363-6200 (North America)
>
> +1-905-477-0437 (World Wide)
>
> ACE Fax: 905-477-0217
>
> You could try them - I have no idea how much they charge for such a project
> or whether it's available "off the shelf".
>
>
> HTH
> --
> Tony Walton
>
> Path:
> news7.ispnews.com!hub4.ispnews.com!hub1.ispnews.co m!news.maxwell.syr.edu!rill.
> news.pipex.net!pipex!dispose.news.demon.net!demon! news.demon.co.uk!demon!cucum
> ber.demon.co.uk!usenet
> From: andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel)
> Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris
> Subject: Re: Bootable tape on Solaris SPARC
> Date: 14 Feb 1999 11:32:01 GMT
> Organization: home
> Distribution: inet
> Message-ID: <7a6c7h$64a@cucumber.demon.co.uk>
> References: <36C5FA09.2D0EDDB2@stones.com>
> <michael-1302992037170001@tc3-dialin29.nanospace.com>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: cucumber
> X-NNTP-Posting-Host: cucumber.demon.co.uk:158.152.58.86
> X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 919002829 nnrp-08:16815 NO-IDENT
> cucumber.demon.co.uk:158.152.58.86
> X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net
> X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
> Lines: 21
> Xref: hub1.ispnews.com comp.unix.solaris:75415
>
> >In article <36C5FA09.2D0EDDB2@stones.com>, thomas.wagner@stones.com wrote:
> >>can somebody tell me:
> >>if I want to have a Sparc-system that can be restored in case of a
> >>failure by a non UNIX-experienced person:
> >>is it possible to create a bootable tape ?
> >
> >Nope. This should be in the FAQ. There's no "makesysb" style tape
> >like with AIX. To recover from a disaster, you boot the installation
> >media, install a bootable system on another disk and restore from
> >backup tape.
>
> Take a look at sysbkup/sysrestore...
>
> http://www.cucumber.demon.co.uk/solaris/

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