These are some notes to elaborate on acronyms and terms used in this document.
When mentioning
Acronyms:
First, make sure you do not have a keyboard and monitor plugged in. OBP will use the monitor for output by default if either are plugged in. You will need a null modem cable or a regular serial cable with a null modem adapter to be able to view output.
Standard serial port settings:
Below is a list of commonly used programs for viewing a serial console. Check to see if your serial console application has the ability to send a break, as it can be very useful on a SPARC. The break signal on a serial console is the equivalent to issuing the Stop+A command on the keyboard.
| Linux | Windows |
|---|---|
This problem is a result of the framebuffer support the Linux kernel loads at
boot time, and the modelines available on SPARC systems. Here we will assume
your monitor and video card will agree on a resolution of 1024 by 768 at a
refresh rate of 60 Hz. In OBP, you can set the resolution by adjusting the
setting for
ok printenv output-device<output-device> <screen> <screen>
Now, to set this so it will start the display using the above mentioned
resolution, we will use the
ok setenv output-device screen:r1024x768x60 output-device = screen:r1024x768x60
In order for this to take effect, you will need to reset the machine:
ok reset
Additionally, for users using the onboard video card based on the ATI Mach64 chipset (Ultra 5/10 and Blade 100/150), you will want to append the following to your kernel boot options:
video=atyfb:1024x768@60
If you are booting from SILO, you can append the above string onto the end of a given boot image. The following example would be if you were booting from the LiveCD.
boot: gentoo video=atyfb:1024x768@60
If you were booting from the network, you would append the string onto the end of the boot net command in OBP as illustrated below:
ok boot net video=atyfb:1024x768@60
Most of the time, the default kernel options will be acceptable for hardware
support. You will need to make sure that
Dual booting Gentoo/SPARC and Solaris can be done one of two ways. The two ways are: having both Gentoo/SPARC and Solaris on the same drive, or having them on separate drives. Below are example SILO configurations for each scenario. In the example configs, the following things are assumed:
Single Drive Setup:
Separate Drive Setup:
# Generic config options partition = 1 timeout = 50# Gentoo/SPARC options image = /boot/vmlinux label = linux root=/dev/sda4# Solaris options other=5 label = Solaris
# Generic config options parition = 1 timeout = 50# Gentoo/SPARC options image = /boot/vmlinux label = linux root=/dev/sda4# Solaris options other = /sbus/espdma/esp/sd@1,0;1 label = solaris
It depends on the type of SPARC, but chances are yes. One exception seems to be the SPARC based laptops from Tadpole, particularly the newer models. If you have a working Tadpole on Gentoo/SPARC, please contact us and let us know the details on the model and anything special needed to get it to work.
The Gentoo/SPARC team maintains a
For a list of additionally supported Sun hardware, consult the following list
from the
A partial list of Sun devices which do NOT currently have support under Gentoo/SPARC or SPARC/Linux in general are:
Also, the Gentoo/SPARC team maintains a
The
First, the reason they all they all have the same setting is due to a value in OpenBoot PROM (OBP). The story goes that in times past, it was assumed that if a host had multiple interfaces, the interfaces would not reside on the same Ethernet and therefore having the MAC address unique to a machine rather than to a NIC wouldn't be a problem. As time went on and different technologies developed, the opposite was proven.
As for fixing the issue, there are two ways to it; from OBP and from Linux. The
OBP variable
ok printenv local-mac-address? local-mac-address? = false
# eeprom local-mac-address? local-mac-address?=false
As you'll notice from the samples above,
ok setenv local-mac-address?=true local-mac-address? = true
# eeprom local-mac-address?=true
Note that you may need to reboot to see the changes take affect.
The version supported by Gentoo/SPARC (v9) is bi-endian. It uses big-endian instructions, but can access data in little-endian byte-order, such as PCI devices, which are little-endian by nature.
The ATI Framebuffer normally expects a PC's BIOS to set the Reference Clock
speed for the video card. However, on non-x86 architectures, this doesn't
happen. So what needs to be done is to set the Reference Clock speed in the
In the "Device" section of your
Option "reference_clock" "28.636 MHz"
Other common speeds are 14.318 MHz and 29.5 MHz. If you have issues you might want to try without a similar setting first.
Chances are this is due to the fact that none of the Gentoo/SPARC developers
have gotten around to testing this yet, and/or the package is currently marked
with the
If you still want to install the package, you can follow the instructions from
the
If you want to help ensure a package gets marked stable in a timely fashion,
particularly if it's an application with a small userbase (i.e.
net-im/bitlbee), install the package and test to make sure it works. If it
appears to be working well, feel free to file a bug via the
This is a bug. Please file a bug report via the
The way SPARC/Linux handles the cross-compiler has changed with 2.6.25 (
CHK include/linux/version.h CHK include/linux/utsrelease.h CC arch/sparc64/kernel/asm-offsets.s arch/sparc64/kernel/asm-offsets.c:1: error: -m64 is not supported by this configuration arch/sparc64/kernel/asm-offsets.c:1: error: -mlong-double-64 not allowed with -m64 arch/sparc64/kernel/asm-offsets.c:1: error: -mcmodel= is not supported on 32 bit systems make[1]: *** [arch/sparc64/kernel/asm-offsets.s] Error 1 make: *** [prepare0] Error 2
Because, for the moment (there's an experimental
What you need to do is to tell the SPARC/Linux Makefile what is your cross-compiler's binary, by issuing the following commands:
# cd /usr/src/linux # make CROSS_COMPILE=sparc64-unknown-linux-gnu- # make CROSS_COMPILE=sparc64-unknown-linux-gnu- image modules_install
There are various ways to improve the project: