SunOS Install Media


by Peter Koch, March 1995

1. Abstract

Every Computer needs an Operating System to do it's task. If a customer buys a machine, regardless, if the machine is new or used, it can have a preinstalled OS or be completely uninstalled. In most cases, it is desirable to install the OS from scratch. This has two reasons: First, you get an idea, what software comes with the OS and second, you shouldn't trust other people's work with something as critical as the entire OS.

In the rare case of a disk crash (or some novice removing /boot), the sysadmin needs an alternative way to boot the machine and restore a backup. The install medium usually provides a possibility to repair boot problems or format a defective disk.

Today we're talking about SunOS 4.1.1 for the Sun3 series of Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun has recently dropped the support for the Sun3 line completely, but most of these machines are still in good working condition (this paper was written on a Sun 3/60) and are still usefull for people, that can't afford thousands of dollars to buy a high-end PC or SPARC workstation.

This paper copes with install media for the SunOS 4.1.1 in general and it might help such people, that are in big trouble or have the need for (re-)installing the OS.

2. Available media

SunOS 4.1.1 was sold on two differnt media: on tapes and on cdrom. Unfortunately, many Sun3 owners have neither a tape drive nor a cdrom drive. And worse, many older Sun3's can't boot from cdrom or even anything else than a QIC-24 tape. There is a third method of installing the OS: from the net. But this assumes, that there is a server, from which the machine in question can boot and which itself does have a tape or cdrom drive.

Clever sysadmins do have an alternative boot partition on a secondary disk. This will help in case of troubles. But it is even possible to install SunOS from a disk. This was never supported by Sun, but it can be made to work.

3. Available devices

As mentioned before, there are a couple of devices, from which a Sun3 can be booted/installed. We will discuss them now briefly. Sometimes, i'll use the short-term name of the devices as they are configured into the generic kernel. Here are the SCSI devices with their corresponding SCSI-id and boot commands:

Device	SCSI-id	PROM boot command
sd0	0	sd(0,0,slice)
sd2	1	sd(0,8,slice)
sd4	2	sd(0,10,slice)
sd6	3	sd(0,18,slice)
st0	4	st(0,0,file)
st1	5	st(0,8,file)
sr0	6	sd(0,30,slice)

3.1 Tape drives

Since many people, that run an Unix machine, don't want to loose their data by accident, they make backups. Tapes are cheap and reliable, so it is likely to find a tape drive near a Sun3. We will concentrate on SCSI tape drives (st), because the others (xt and mt) are heavy, rare and considered obsolete today. Of course, the old server machines, which have these devices, can still boot from them, so you might give them a try.
Device		MB	Comment
Archive Phyton	60	QIC-11 and QIC-24
Wangtec		60	QIC-11 and QIC-24
Archive Phyton	150	QIC-150, can read QIC-11 and QIC-24
Wangtec		150	QIC-150, can read QIC-11 and QIC-24
Exabyte	8200	2000	8mm
Exabyte 8205	5000	8mm
Exabyte 8500	5000	8mm
Exabyte	8505	12000	8mm
DDS-1 DAT	2000	4mm
DDS-2 DAT	12000	4mm
Every Sun3 can boot from a QIC-24 tape streamer, as long as the machine does have an SCSI controller. Some Sun3's with newer PROM versions can boot from QIC-150 tapes.

3.2 Cdrom drives

Most Sun3 can't boot from cdrom. But boot partitions for both sun3 and sun3x architectures exist on the medium. If you have PROM versions greater than 3.0, you might try it:
	>b sd(0,30,4)	sun3 architecture
	>b sd(0,30,3)	sun3x architecture

3.3 Disk drives

Sun3's with very old PROM versions can only boot from the disk with SCSI id 0 (sd0). But this is not a big problem. It might require some screwing though. For VME-Bus machines, there are two SCSI controllers available: the older Sun2 controller and the newer Sun3 controller. The old controller does have problems with disks, which have parity enabled and probably won't work with modern disks. One type of Sun2 controllers connects through the backplane with an internal cable to an internal disk and/or tape drive. It has no external connector. You'll need to open the case to access this SCSI bus. But this is still better than a machine without SCSI controller at all!

3.4 Diskettes

The Sun 3/80 comes with a floppy disk drive. It can boot from the floppy drive, although it is not fun to install the entire OS from hundreds of 1.4 MB disks. But it provides an alternate way to get into the miniroot. I haven't investigated in this, because i don't own a 3/80 (yet).

3.5 Ethernet

Since this device only moves the problematic of the install medium to the server, we won't discus it here. But it is yet another possibility to boot or install SunOS. Suninstall is prepared to work with remote tape and cdrom drives and in case of disk troubles, the ethernet can be used to bring the machine up again and solve the problem.

4. PROM versions

The following table lists PROM version numbers with some comments from me. It is in no way complete and if you can add a new entry, send me an e-mail.
Machine	Version	Comment

3/50	1.3	can only boot from sd0 and QIC-24
3/50	2.6	can boot from any disk and QIC-150

3/60	1.6	can only boot from sd0 and QIC-24
3/60	2.8	can boot from any disk and QIC-150
3/60	3.01	can't boot from QIC-150 but from cdrom
3/60	3.02	can boot from QIC-150 and cdrom

3/260	2.0	can't boot from QIC-150 and cdrom

3/470	3.0	can boot from QIC-150 and cdrom

5. The boot sequence

Understanding the boot sequence of any install medium is necessary to find alternative ways to use it. I'll give a step by step introduction, how to boot from every install medium and describe, what happens.

5.1 Munix

This first step is not necessary for booting from disk. Exactly, this step will allow you to start an Unix kernel, which doesn't need a disk, so you can format or partition the disk before it it is really needed and used.

Insert the tape or cdrom into the drive. To boot from tape, enter from the boot monitor:

	>b st()
This loads the first file (called tpboot) on tape into memory and executes it. Tpboot then loads file #3 (called munix) and runs it.

With the cdrom, enter:

	>b sd(0,30,4)		(sun3)
	>b sd(0,30,3)		(sun3x)
This will load munix directly.

Munix is a special kernel (a vmunix without v), that resides completely in memory. It's root file system is loaded from file #4 of the tape or from cdrom into the memory too. Two special device drivers are involved here: the ns-device (no-swap) and the rd-device (ramdisk). Xkernel user should have heard about them already. They are not part of the SunOS distribution; they are only built into the munix kernel. This makes it impossible to configure such a munix kernel.

5.2 Miniroot

When munix is running, it asks you, if to install the miniroot or to exit to a shell. It is very funny to choose the second option and snoop around a little bit. You can see an absolute minimalist Unix here. If you choose the first option, you can run format then. After partitioning the disk, munix copies file #5 (the miniroot) on partition b of the choosen disk. It uses the command:
	#dd if=/dev/nrst8 of=/dev/rsd0b bs=100k conv=sync
Then the system is rebooted with the command:
	>b sd(0,0,1) -sw
Notice, that the miniroot kernel uses partition b both for the root filesystem and swapping! This can only work, if the real partition b is bigger than the miniroot filesystem (7 MB). I'd recommend about 4 times the main memory of the machine (e.g. at least 16 MB) for swap.

5.3 Suninstall

Call "suninstall" from the miniroot. If you have choosen, which software packages to install, there comes the first big difference between CD and tape: With a CD, suninstall can simply mount the data partition onto /usr/etc/install/tar, but from tape, it has to read file by file, uncompress them and untar them on the fly.

6. The table of contents

Sun uses a XDR-encoded table of contents (called xdrtoc) for their install media. It can be found on top level of the cdrom or as file #2 of each tape volume. A xdrtoc file has the following entries: A header, which contains the volume number and an entry for each file, which consists of the file length, file name, file description, file type, file position and the volume, where the file can be found. File types are (for example): image, text, tar and tarZ (compressed tar). You can translate a xdrtoc into human readable format, if you feed it into /usr/etc/install/xdrtoc.
	#/usr/etc/install/xdrtoc < /tmp/xdrtoc
It is not easy to make xdrtoc files. I used "hexvi" and "beav" to modify existing ones and this worked great. You can find a couple of usefull xdrtoc files in Appendix C.

7. Extracting the install media

It is essential to be able to extract the media files, if you want to rearrange them.

7.1 Tape medium

The tape files can be read off the tape with the "dd" command. Make yourself familliar with it's odd parameter style (RTFM). There is a nice little program called "copytape", which will do the trick too.

7.2 Cdrom medium

Simply use "tar" to copy the partition a of the cdrom to your disk:
	#mount -r -t hsfs /dev/sr0 /cdrom
	#cd /cdrom
	#tar cf - . | ( cd /tmp ; tar xpf - )
The only files, which are still missing now are munix and the munix filesystem. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to extract them.

8. Alternatives

It is possible to install SunOS from any tape, cdrom and disk drive, which works without additional device drivers on a Sun3. And you can do even more: I've sucessfully used "gzip" instead of "compress" to pack the tar archives, so the complete SunOS install files fit on a single QIC-24 60 MB cartridge. Then i modified the miniroot to use "gunzip" instead of "uncompress" and "suninstall" still worked.

8.1 Installing from disk

This can be done by making a fake cdrom image. Get an empty disk, make a 150 MB partition a and a 30 MB partition b. Copy the contents of the cdrom partition a to the disk:
	#newfs /dev/rsd2a
	#mount -r -t hsfs /dev/sr0 /cdrom
	#mount /dev/sd2a /mnt
	#cd /cdrom
	#tar cf - . | ( cd /mnt ; tar xpf -)
If you only have the tape files, refer to Appendix A, how to convert them. At last, copy the miniroot onto partition b:
	#cd /mnt/export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1
	#dd if=miniroot.sun3 of=/dev/rsd2b bs=100k conv=sync
Now boot into the miniroot:
	#halt
	>b sd(0,8,1) -sw
If the miniroot prompt shows up, mount the faked partition:
	#/etc/mount -r /dev/sd2a /usr/etc/install/tar
Rename the "umount" command, so "suninstall" cannot unmount the fake partition by accident (and it tries to do so several times):
	#mv /etc/umount /etc/um
	#suninstall
If you're done, rename "umount" back before you reboot:
	#mv /etc/um /etc/umount
	#reboot

8.2 Using GNU zip

On tape, most of the files are compressed tar archives. If you uncompress and gzip these files, the complete distribution will only have about 50 MB instead of 69 MB before. Thus, the distribution now fits onto a single QIC-24 tape. The only change which is necessary, is to replace "uncompress" and "zcat" by a statically linked version of "gzip". "gzip" is drop-in compatible to "compress", so this will suffice:
	#cd /tmp
	#dd if=tape1.05 of=/dev/rsd2e bs=100k
	#ftp 
	>bin
	>cd /pub/gnu
	>get gzip-1.2.4.tar
	>bye
	#tar xvf gzip-1.2.4.tar
	#cd gzip-1.2.4
	#./configure
Change the Makefile to produce a staically linked "gzip" by adding "-static" to the LDFLAGS.
	#make
	#strip gzip
	#mount /dev/sd2e /mnt
	#rm /mnt/usr/ucb/uncompress /mnt/usr/ucb/zcat
	#cp gzip /mnt/usr/ucb/uncompress
	#ln /mnt/usr/ucb/uncompress /mnt/usr/ucb/zcat
	#umount /mnt
	#dd if=/dev/rsd2e of=tape1.05 bs=100k count=70
	#foreach i (`file *|grep compress|sed -e "s/:.*$//"`)
	#mv $i $i.Z
	#uncompress $i.Z
	#gzip $i
	#end
	#rm tape1.29 tape1.30 tape2.01 tape2.02
Copy the xdrtoc file for the QIC-150 tapes to tape1.02 and save all files onto a QIC-24 tape.

8.3 Uncompressed tape files

On slow machines like the Sun 3/50, uncompress is the bottleneck of the installation procedure. If you have a faster tape device like an Exabyte or DAT, you can save the tar archives uncompressed. This will speed up the installation procedure considerably. You only need another xdrtoc file.

9. Customizing the miniroot

The miniroot is a normal filesystem. If you have a spare partiton (say sd2e) , you can try this:
	#dd if=/tmp/miniroot of=/dev/rsd2e bs=100k
	#mount /dev/sd2e /mnt
And you can modify the miniroot for your needs. Later, save it back to file:
	#umount /mnt
	#dd if=/dev/rsd2e of=/tmp/miniroot bs=100k count=70
I made a couple of modifications to the miniroot filesystem to suit my personal needs: I added some usefull commands like gzip, tcsh and others. Then i compiled a new kernel with some third party device drivers and more devices.

Appendix A

Here comes the list, how the cdrom files correspond to the tape files.
tape files	cdrom files
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-		./avail_arches
tape1.08	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/kvm
tape1.05	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/miniroot_sun3
tape1.12	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sys
tape1.02	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/xdrtoc
tape1.06	./export/exec/proto_root_sunos_4_1_1
tape1.24	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/debugging
tape1.16	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/demo
tape2.03	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/games
tape1.27	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/graphics
tape1.09	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/install
tape1.10	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/networking
tape1.18	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_demo
tape1.19	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_fonts
tape2.06	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_programmers
tape1.17	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_users
tape1.23	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/rfs
tape2.05	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/security
tape1.26	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/shlib_custom
tape1.14	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_demo
tape1.25	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_programmers
tape1.13	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_users
tape1.11	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/system_v
tape1.15	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/text
tape1.22	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/tli
tape1.20	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/user_diag
tape1.07	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/usr
tape1.28	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/uucp
tape2.04	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/versatec
tape1.21	./export/share/sunos_4_1_1/manual
tape1.29+
tape2.10	./_copyright
tape2.08	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_cplusplus_2_0
tape2.07	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_ipc
tape2.09	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_taac
-		./patches/sunos_4_1_1/_readme

Appendix B

Here comes the list, how the tape files correspond to the cdrom image.
tape files	cdrom files
---------------------------------------------------------------------
tape1.01	/usr/kvm/stand/tpboot.sun3
tape1.02	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/xdrtoc
tape1.03	munix	(vmunix on partition d of CDROM)
tape1.04	munixfs (hm... it is somewhere on part. d too)
tape1.05	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/miniroot_sun3
tape1.06	./export/exec/proto_root_sunos_4_1_1
tape1.07	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/usr
tape1.08	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/kvm
tape1.09	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/install
tape1.10	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/networking
tape1.11	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/system_v
tape1.12	./export/exec/kvm/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sys
tape1.13	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_users
tape1.14	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_demo
tape1.15	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/text
tape1.16	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/demo
tape1.17	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_users
tape1.18	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_demo
tape1.19	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_fonts
tape1.20	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/user_diag
tape1.21	./export/share/sunos_4_1_1/manual
tape1.22	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/tli
tape1.23	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/rfs
tape1.24	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/debugging
tape1.25	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/sunview_programmers
tape1.26	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/shlib_custom
tape1.27	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/graphics
tape1.28	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/uucp
tape1.29	./_copyright
tape2.01	xdrtoc
tape2.02	xdrtoc
tape2.03	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/games
tape2.04	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/versatec
tape2.05	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/security
tape2.06	./export/exec/sun3_sunos_4_1_1/openwindows_programmers
tape2.07	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_ipc
tape2.08	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_cplusplus_2_0
tape2.09	./patches/sunos_4_1_1/patch_taac
tape2.10	./_copyright

Appendix C

Here you can download XDRTOC files for all described install configurations. Notice, that for QIC-24, there are two files, one for each tape.

Appendix D

How to install 4.1.1_U1 without using a tape drive (by M. Etteldorf)