SUMMARY Sparc 10 refuses to auto-boot from disk

Bill Fenwick (bill@solstice.digicomp.com)
Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:19:38 -0400

Not bad! I haven't even seen my original post and already I've gotten a bunch o'
replies. Thanks to all.

My original question was:

>Here's our situation: We recently acquired a Sparcserver 10 and a Sparcstation
>LX. Upon trying to install Solaris on those machines, I found that the eeprom
>on both machines was in "secure" mode... and of course, nobody knew the PROM
>password. And the disks we got with the machines were wiped clean.
>
>After cussing a bit (OK, a *lot*), I was able to get replacement eeprom chips
>for both machines, and was thus able to install Solaris and set the systems up.
> So now, all is sweetness and light... except...
>
>Both machines attempt to boot off the network, despite having working disks. To
>get them to boot, I have to do a Stop-A and issue "boot disk" and then it works
>fine -- until the next reboot. I've tried everything I can think of to get
>these machines to recognize their boot drives, including setting the eeprom
>boot-device to "disk" or "/iommu/sbus/etc.etc." but the X&*%!! things still
>insist on trying to boot from the network.
>
>Apologies in advance 'cause I'm sure I'm missing something dead-obvious, but
>this one's got me stumped. TIA and IWS.

I was right -- it was pretty obvious. Thanks to:

Daniel Lorenzini <lorenzd@gcm.com>
Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
Ric Anderson <ric@rtd.com>
Anchi <azhang@ect.enron.com>
Derek Cameron <Derek_Cameron@eagle.co.nz>
Arthur Darren Dunham <add@is.rice.edu>

who all pointed out that I needed to set the eeprom diag-switch? to false, else
it would always boot from the diag-device (net). Once I did that, it worked
like a charm.

-- 
Bill Fenwick                                     Email:  fenwick@digicomp.com
Digicomp Research                                Voice:  (607) 273-5900 ext 32