Re: Installation of Debian on an iMac PowerPC
Hello Frank,
thank you very much for the detailed answer :-)
> Am 26.02.2019 um 20:20 schrieb Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner@web.de>:
>
> Hi Karl,
>
>> On 2/26/19 17:34, Carlos wrote:
>> Hello Adrian,
>>
>> when you are talking about GRUB, are you talking about GRUB2?
>> Are you aware of this page?
>> http://cynic.cc/blog/posts/running_grub2_on_powerpc_macs/
>>
>> I just found this page. Don’t know if this helps your development.
>
> Let me answer for Adrian and hopefully clarify things a little. :-)
>
> It's out of the question that GRUB2 (nowadays often referred to as just
> GRUB) works on NewWorld Power Macs and also POWER based machines (which
> are also in the scope of this list). We tested GRUB successfully on many
> NewWorld Power Macs from the Blue & White G3 to the 11,2 type G5 (also
> incl. Slot Load Xserve G4 and G5) - IIRC actually using the method from
> the URL you mentioned above. We also confirmed that it works on POWER
> based machines down to POWER5. All that already in 2017 IIRC.
>
> The issue we still have is that we do not yet have an implementation for
> the d-i/grub-installer (the "package" that actually installs GRUB during
> a Debian installation) that does successfully install GRUB on NewWorld
> Power Macs. We have such an implementation for POWER based machines though.
>
> But the NewWorld Power Mac specifics for booting a machine are a little
> more complex. The usual way is to put a boot loader like GRUB on a HFS
> partition (the NewWorld bootstrap partition) from which the firmware can
> load and start it. But as there is no "full" support (i.e. file system
> handling) for HFS in the partitioning step of the Debian installation,
> we need to implement the file system handling for HFS in addition. And
> we also have to take care not to scuttle the support for other
> architectures in d-i/grub-installer. All that takes time for development
> and testing. Not enough we also need to be able to fix the bootstrap
> partition during runtime, e.g. in case of FS errors, which is currently
> broken for G5s with 64 bit userland but also being worked on. So in time
> we will get all this working.
>
> ****
>
> Everything written above was also already posted to this list some time
> ago, so it's strongly recommended to check the list archive ([1]) - for
> maybe the last two years or so. :-) Yes, I know, that's a lot of stuff,
> but it will give the reader a profound background and a much better
> understanding of the topics on this list.
>
> [1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/
>
> Cheers,
> Frank
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