Re: Debian "wheezy" install on Netra X1 done

Hi Dennis,

On Wed, 2025-09-03 at 16:43 -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:
> The trick is to tell apt to just ignore the GPG authentication
> issues entirely. During the install process there will be a failure
> on a package and then just drop into a shell :
> 
> 
>             cd /target/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
> 
> Use the horrific nano editor and create a file "99unsecure" :
> 
> # cat  /target/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99unsecure
> Acquire::AllowInsecureRepositories true;
> Acquire::AllowDowngradeToInsecureRepositories true;
> APT::Get::AllowUnauthenticated true;
> 
> 
> Then return to the installer and everything will go smoothly.

Thanks for the heads-up, useful to know.

> When the machine reboots it is not unreasonable to see the boot fail.
> This is due to the boot-device firmware variable being wrong. No big
> deal. Just do the boot from the list of nvalias output for your disk.
> 
> NOTE : do a full power off and cool down before booting

OK, thanks.

> Now that the box runs an old old Debian version is there a path to
> upgrade using some apt sources stuff ?

Not really. Wheezy is ancient and trying to upgrade that to unstable
will just horribly fail, in particular since you also will have to
switch architectures in between.

> The objective is to get to a reasonable state wherein I can
> fetch build-essential stuff and apply the kernel patches.

You don't need to apply any patches, just install the test kernel:

https://people.debian.org/~glaubitz/sparc64/linux-image-6.12.3-sparc64-smp_6.12.3-1+sparc64_sparc64.deb

If you want to upgrade the machine to unstable, I would just recommend
using debootstrap to create a sparc64 chroot on that machine on a second
disk and then extract the kernel package above and install the kernel,
then boot it with the correct root filesystem.

# debootstrap --no-check-gpg --arch=sparc64 unstable sparc64-chroot \
              --include=debian-ports-archive-keyring \
              http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer
`. `'   Physicist
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