I have a Sparc based system (a MicroSparc II on a VME card) that is without a CDROM drive and has to be able to install SunOS or Solaris over the network (it has a local SCSI-2 disk and a fast Ethernet SBUS card).

I found some useful background information here on how to support Solaris network installations using just a Linux host:

http://hintshop.ludvig.co.nz/show/solaris-jumpstart-linux-server/

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~cvs/unix/Solaris-Linux-NetInstall.html

http://www.znark.com/tech/solarisinstall.html

The Sparc machine doesn't do full DHCP from OpenBoot to acquire an IP address, netmask, gateway, DNS etc; it only does rarp, which needs *rarpd* running on our Linux host. We then have to add the ethernet address of our Sparc machine to /etc/ethers on the Linux host, as well as add an appropriate IP/hostname entry to /etc/hosts. For example:

echo "00:01:02:03:04:ef sparky" >> /etc/ethers
echo "192.168.1.15 sparky" >> /etc/hosts

Run the rarp daemon in verbose mode (rarpd -v) and monitor syslog/messages for queries from the Sparc machine as it powers on. You should see a request for “00:01:02:03:04:ef” being answered by “192.168.1.15”.

The next step is supplying a kernel image to the booting Sparc machine.

TBC

TBC

TBC