Kumba
Developer
Joined: 16 Jul 2002
Posts: 393
Location: Sigma 957
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 Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2002 8:59 am Post subject: How to Flash Openboot Prom from linux |
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Okay, So I get bored, do a little of searching, and discover there is a new Openboot firmware available for my Sun Blade system, OpenBoot 4.6.5.
One problem, I wiped the disk that was in this machine, which had a perfectly bootable Solaris system, which was quite useful in upgrading the Openboot prom once before (4.0 -> 4.5).
So after about 6 hours of screwing around, in trying to get a 9 year old junk harddrive attached to the system (it works, surprise), formatted to Solaris' UFS filesystem, getting it mounted somehow, and dumping the flash prom upgrades on it, I am stuck. OpenBoot refuses to boot the flashupdater tool on this spare harddisk, because it complains about a "bad label". I really don't know any other ways of creating fully bootable solaris drive, in some fashion that'll get OpenBoot to boot the bloody thing, nor do I know if it is possible for this firmware upgrade to get applied via a bootable CD-ROM, or by SILO.
What I do know, is in the kernel configuration, there is a kernel module that creates a device for flash access to the OpenBoot PROM. Problem is, I do not know of anyway to use or access it. Google has very little information as well, the only relevant information I've managed to find is this post on a debian mailing list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2001/debian-sparc-200110/msg00059.html.
The url/software referenced in that mailing list message is non-existant, and I've looked through the kernel.org archive a bit, and didn't turn up anything relevant as well. I figure, if anyone knows where this software is, it might be something highly useful for the sparc/sparc64 group and could/should be added to Portage. And help utterly clueless people like me flash this stupid thing :P
--Kumba
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"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic |
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Gentoo on Sparc
