Re: Unbootable system after fresh install on Sun Ultra 45 workstation

John,

I used this image:
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/current/debian-12.0.0-sparc64-NETINST-1.iso

sdb2 may sound strange, but it is the correct partition for /, as the
machine has solaris installed on what it thinks is sda :)

Fstab has not been modified and does indeed refer to the paritions by
UUID. This is the first boot after a fresh install. The error message
of can't mount /root probably is probably a side effect of the
initramfs process or someone trying to make it more user friendly.

Installation was done in guided partition mode, using the full (sdb)
disk. sdb1 is /boot, sbd2 is / and sbd3 is swap in this particular
installation.

The system clearly tried to load the wrong crc32c module, instead of
crc32c_generic, which triggered the following kernel messages:
 [   75.478521] crc32c_sparc64: sparc64 crc32c opcode not available.
 [   75.652621] EXT4-fs (sdb2): Cannot load crc32c driver.



On Mon, May 19, 2025 at 4:32 PM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello Marcelo,
>
> On Mon, 2025-05-19 at 16:24 +0200, Marcelo Bezerra wrote:
> > II just tried to install debian on a ultra sparc III based Sun Ultra
> > 45 workstation with the newest netinst image I could find, but the
> > resulting install is not able to mount the root filesystem to complete
> > the boot process.
>
> Which image did you use (please provide the URL) and what partition layout
> did you use? I'm surprised that the root filesystem is referenced with the
> device node name (/dev/sdb2) and not the UUID of the partition which has
> been standard on Debian for a long time.
>
> Also, why does it try to mount the filesystem on /root and not /? Did you
> modify the partition layout and /etc/fstab yourself by any chance? Can you
> post your /etc/fstab?
>
> > The UltraSparc IIIi cpu in this machine lacks the crc32 opcodes and
> > needs to use the crc32c_generic driver instead. Is this expected
> > behavior because the machine is too old, or is this a bug?
>
> Those instructions were introduced with the SPARC T4 CPU, as far as I know:
>
> https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/post/sparc-t4-openssl-engine
>
> > Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... done.
> > Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ... done.
> > Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... done.
> > Begin: Will now check root file system ... fsck from util-linux 2.41
> > [/sbin/fsck.ext4 (1) -- /dev/sdb2] fsck.ext4 -a -C0 /dev/sdb2
> > /dev/sdb2: clean, 33434/133169152 files, 9133747/532645976 blocks
> > done.
> > [   75.478521] crc32c_sparc64: sparc64 crc32c opcode not available.
> > [   75.652621] EXT4-fs (sdb2): Cannot load crc32c driver.
> > mount: mounting /dev/sdb2 on /root failed: No such file or directory
> > Failed to mount /dev/sdb2 as root file system.
>
> Mounting /dev/sdb2 on /root sounds very strange and not something that I would
> expect when automatic partitioning is used in debian-installer.
>
> Adrian
>
> --
>  .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
> : :' :  Debian Developer
> `. `'   Physicist
>   `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913