Re: new installer

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:52:58PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 09:16:52AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
> > Notice that when i asked about this on debian-powerpc, i was told that
> > the 2.4 kernel could be made to fit on 1.44 floppy disks. In fact, if i
> > look at the kernel-image-2.4.21 packages, i find that :
> > 
> >   - /boot/vmlinux.coff-2.4.21-powerpc is of size : 1299802
> > 
> >   - the .coff kernels don't have a udeb at all.
> 
> a .coff kernel won't autoboot, the user would have to manually get
> into OpenFirmware and boot it explicity.

Ok, the .coff is for manual installation using the OF. 

> the current miboot boot floppies require the vmlinux binary, which may
> be gzipped.

Mmm, i am lost here, i own no powermac hardware of any kind (but would
gladly accept donation of such to test the debian powerpc kernels on),
and i thought that, until yaboot2 is working, you use yaboot on newworld
powermacs, which don't support compressed kernels.

I thought oldpmac hardware used quik, but there is also bootx and now
miboot. So, when using quick, what is kernel that is needed ? 

If i look at the kernel's arch/ppc/boot/images, i get :

  1602678 miboot.image
  2291148 vmlinux.coff
  2360440 vmlinux.elf-pmac
  1602433 vmlinux.gz
  2360304 zImage.chrp
  2360304 zImage.chrp-rs6k
  12	  zImage.pmac -> vmlinux.coff
  1655582 zImage.prep

(Notice, these are not the kernel image, but my own build tree, so the
sizes are bigger).

So, i thought we had kernels for chrp, prep and chrp-rs6k, the
uncompressed elf-pmac for yaboot, and the .coff image.

This leaves the miboot.image and the vmlinux.gz i don't know anything
about.

> also .coff kernels don't even work until 2.4.23 (maybe).

:((

> > This comes together with a general effort i am doing to get all powerpc
> > subarches supported by the powerpc kernel, since right now, only newpmac
> > is supported in the udeb, and only oldpmac and newpmac are supported in
> > the deb.
> > 
> > Notice also that i asked questions about this on the debian-powerpc
> > mailing list, and _nobody_ replied, so i guess nobody really cares, and
> > thus has the right to make critics here.
> 
> yup, nobody cares about doing installer stuff.  i myself have zero
> desire to do that again, i fixed woody for you folks, now its somebody
> elses turn.

No oldpmac user does, that is, we have suppport for newworld, probably
both chrp as well as prep, and pegasos.

So, most probably d-i for sarge will support those arches or subarches
for people who care about it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther