Choosing a Boot Method

This section describes how to start (or boot) the installation program. Once the installation program is running, you will be able to choose from several installation methods. You can choose from the following installation methods: CD-ROM, hard drive, FTP and HTTP. (Note that if the installation program is booted directly from CD-ROM, the installation will automatically proceed from that CD-ROM.)

There are three different ways a Red Hat Linux/SPARC installation can be started:

Boot From Disk -- The installation program is started from a disk.
Boot From CD-ROM -- The installation program is started directly from the Red Hat Linux/SPARC CD-ROM.
Boot From the Network -- The installation program is read from a TFTP server.

Booting from Disk

In most cases, if your SPARC system has a disk drive, you can boot the Red Hat Linux/SPARC installation program from a disk.

	Please Note
	You can't boot an SMCC manufactured UltraSPARC (made by Sun Microcomputers) from disk; you'll need to choose another boot method.

The boot disk image (boot32.img for sun4c and sun4m; and boot64.img for UltraSPARC) is located in the images/ directory on your Red Hat Linux/SPARC CD-ROM. You'll need to write this file to a floppy disk.

You'll need a blank, formatted, high-density (1.44 MB), 3.5-inch disk. You'll need access to a computer with a 3.5-inch disk drive and the capability of running a DOS program or the dd utility program found on most Linux-like operating systems.

See Appendix A for instructions on how to write image files to disks.

Disk Boot Commands

For SPARC systems with a PROM version of 2.0 or greater, the proper boot command (when in new command mode) is:

boot floppy

On the other hand, SPARC systems with PROM versions less than 2.0 should use the following command at the \symgt prompt:

b fd()

	Please Note
	There have been reports that some systems with pre-2.0 PROMs cannot boot the Red Hat Linux/SPARC installation program from disk. Also, PCI-based UltraSPARC machines cannot boot from disk. If this is the case with your SPARC system, you will need to use another boot method (from the CD-ROM or the network).

Booting From CD-ROM

If your SPARC system has a fully Sun-supported CD-ROM drive, you can boot directly from the Red Hat Linux/SPARC CD-ROM.

Please see the Red Hat Linux Hardware Compatibility List at http://www.redhat.com/support/hardware/ to see if your CD-ROM drive will work with Red Hat Linux/SPARC. Sun-supported CD-ROM drives read in 512-byte blocks, so you'll need to use a CD-ROM drive that can read in 512-byte blocks if you want to boot the installation program from a CD-ROM.

For SPARC systems with a PROM version of 2.0 or better, use the following command when in new command mode:

boot cdrom

SPARC systems with PROM versions less than 2.0 may not be able to boot from a CD-ROM at all, although we've received reports that at least some PROM 1.3 systems have been able to boot from CD-ROM. If your SPARC system has a CD-ROM at SCSI id 6, the following command should boot the Red Hat Linux/SPARC installation program:

b sd(0,6,0)

Note that using an NFS-mounted root after booting from CD-ROM is not supported, as the filesystem on the Red Hat Linux/SPARC CD-ROM performs the same function as an NFS-mounted root. Therefore, no additional boot command arguments should be given for CD-ROM boots.

Booting From the Network

The Red Hat Linux/SPARC can network boot with a network-loaded RAM disk. This method can be used by systems with at least 16 MB of RAM. While booting your SPARC system from the network is fairly straightforward, there are several requirements:

Your SPARC system must have a network connection.
Your network must be able to give your SPARC system its IP address via a RARP (Reverse Address Resolution Protocol) message.
You must have a TFTP server that can download the Red Hat Linux/SPARC kernel and installation program to your SPARC system.

TFTP Server Setup

If you are going to set up a TFTP server on a Red Hat Linux system, simply install the latest tftp package using RPM, making sure the line in inetd.conf that will run tftp is uncommented. Don't forget to kill -HUP inetd if you needed to make any changes to inetd.conf.

Next, you'll need to make a symbolic link describing the SPARC system to be booted, and point it to the file from which it should boot. The name of the symlink contains either one or two items:

The IP address of the system to be booted, in hexadecimal.
A string describing the architecture of the system to be booted (only sun4c and sun4m machines need this part).

To convert the more common "dotted decimal" IP address into its hex equivalent, convert each of the four groups of numbers in the IP address into hex. If the resulting hex number is only one digit, add a leading zero to it. Then append all four hex numbers together. For example, take the IP address 10.0.2.254. Convert each set of four numbers into hex, and add a leading zero where necessary:

 10 = A  or 0A
  0 = 0  or 00
  2 = 2  or 02
254 = FE or FE

Therefore, the IP address 10.0.2.254 in hex is: 0A0002FE.

If you have perl available on a system, you can use the following command (modified to include your system's IP address, of course) to have your IP address converted for you:

# perl -e 'printf "%02x"x4 ."\n",10,0,2,254;'
0a0002fe
#

In this example, perl converted 10.0.2.254.

The second part of the symlink name is the SPARC system's architecture. Only sun4m and sun4c machines need this part. For our example, we'll use sun4m. The IP address and architecture are separated by a dot, resulting in this symlink name:

0A0002FE.SUN4M

The last step is figuring out what this symlink should point to. If you're using a RAM disk, use one of these files:

/images/tftp32.img -- for sun4c and sun4m		
/images/tftp64.img -- for UltraSparc

Place the appropriate file in the TFTP server's directory, and create the symlink. In this example, we're using the image that includes a RAM disk:

ln -s tftp32.img 0A0002FE.SUN4M or
ln -s tftp64.img 0A0002FE

Network Boot Commands

You're now ready to boot. If you're going to boot tftp32.img or tftp64.img, simply use the following command (in new command mode):

boot net

If boot net doesn't work, try the following command, which is needed by certain older machines:

boot le()