I am trying to install Debian Sarge on a Sun Ultra 1 the University gave me. I am using the bootable CD image mini.iso for network install and the installation process appears to be going more or less fine, apart from a little thing I'll mention further on, until I get to the step where SILO is installed. I get an error saying that SILO cannot be installed.

I am at my wits' ends because I am not familiar with the Sparc architecture and so I wonder if I did something silly. What can I check?

The small issue I mentioned above is about partitioning and LVM. I was also given an external HD so I wanted to configure that and the internal one as a LVM volume group, so I could create a virtual partition as large as the two drives combined. The problem is this: I create a volume group and it seems to succeed, but when I try to create a logical volume I get a message saying there is no defined volume group. And in fact if I try to change the one I defined, it doesn't show up there. Um, what am I doing wrong?

Things get more and more weird. I tried downloading the CD image and burning it again, just in case there was some download error or some burning problem, and now I get a different problem.

Now the installation doesn't even start: some time after selecting the type of installation, I get a message saying that the FP is disabled, then the installer quits. FP? Huh? Floating Point? I certainly didn't disable it.

Any ideas?

I think I solved the problem. I found out this thread here that implies a problem with the latest kernels on at least some models of Sun Ultra workstations. I used a Woody install CD and apparently the installation went fine. Now for the non-trivial task of configuring the lot...

You booted with "ide=nodma" and all was fine?
I tried to install a recent debian on a Sun Ultra10 and I was shocked to find that in most cases it wouldn't even boot the cdrom properly, much to the amusement of some of my friends who preferred Solaris. I was a bit shocked of how easy to it was get stuff broken compared to how stable Debian was on Sparc32.(xkb reverting back to x86 keyboard configs since that was the way 2.6 kernel did it which didn't work on our Sun5 Euro keyboards when the 2.6 kernel wouldn't even boot.)

Using a really old CD I was finally able to install debian but I could never get the 2.6 kernel up and running. I never tried fancy stuff like LVM and even used the standard Sun partition tables (/dev/hda2 for swap etc) just "to be on the safe side".

Good luck with your Sun computer, it's a nice machine.