Re: [PLUG] inconveniently broke a sun box

["Michael C. Toren" <mct@netaxs.com>]

> On a Linux box, I'd download an image of a boot floppy, boot off of it,
> mount the root partion, edit /etc/passwd, reboot, and be done.
> 
> How do I do this with a sun box ?  (sparc 20 running solaris 2.7)

It's basicly the same as on an x86 machine.

> To make the problem more interesting, the thing does not have a floppy or
> cdrom drive (I'd originally assumed it did).

Does anyone have a bootable, SCSI CDROM you can borrow?  Maybe you have
one in another machine, somewhere?

> I know suns have some kind of initial mini operatign system thing that you
> can boot to.  Would that have any chance of mounting a partition ?

Do you mean the EPROM?  There may be some way of manipulating the disk
in some type of raw mode, but I don't know how offhand, and wouldn't
necessarily recommend it.

> Do sparc 20s have standard floppy controllers ?  Would it be possible to
> plug in a normal floppy drive, get a bootable floppy image somewhere, use
> dd on a linux box (or rawrite on a windows box) to write the image, boot
> off that floppy, and edit /etc/passwd ?  How might I obtain such an image.

No, a PC floppy drive is not compatible with a Sparc floppy drive.

> What filesystem do suns running solaris 2.7 use ?  Is it something that a
> linux boot disk could mount readwrite ?  That could be particularly
> useful.  If you can plug a normal floppy drive into a sparc 20.

2.7 uses UFS, I believe.  I don't remember if Linux can mount UFS
partitions or not.  Another option you might want to pursue is preparing
a TFTP image for it to boot off of.  TFTP images can contain a kernel, as
well as a root file system.

Or, because you're a Netaxs customer, we would probably be able to help
you out if you brought the machine to the office.  Send me mail privately
if you'd like to arrange something.

Thanks,

-mct