Re: new installer
On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:12:56AM +0000, simon raven wrote:
> Le Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 23:52:58 -0800, Ethan Benson a écrit:
> > On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 09:16:52AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> >
> >
> > also .coff kernels don't even work until 2.4.23 (maybe).
>
> ask ben herrenschmidt about that actually. seems that they do work.
Mmm, since you obviously care about oldworld pmacs, would you care of
sending us an overview of the different ways of booting on oldworld
pmacs, and where you get the kernels from for each of them. I gueesed
already the following :
BootX : uses a macos (non-X) bootx program to boot the kernel, no idea
which kernel that is, where you get it from and if it supports an
initrd.
Quik : supports uncompressed kernels (the same as is used with yaboot)
and is used to boot oldworld systems from the harddisk. It seems that
the Performa 6360 does not work with Quik.
miboot: is also a macos (non-X) ROM based tool, can boot compressed
kernels from a floppy, but no idea which kernel this is, and what is
used for initrd. Is this the arch/ppc/boot/images/miboot.image ?
plain OF : uses the .coff kernel, and apparently only works over a
serial OF console.
Is this right, and would you care to test these different setup and fill
in the gaps of our knowledge about this ?
> > 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.
>
> i'm willing but i can't code C my way out of a paper bag. i can cut and
And how do you think half of the open source contributors started ? Just
buy yourself a good C book, or use one of the numerous online tutorials,
and learn :)))
> paste, but that isn't coding. other stuff i *can* do, however, and where
> can i find out what need to be done about this? is it just the kernel
> and bootloader issue, or is there something more to this i need to be
> aware of?
Well, there are actually various parts to the arch/subarch specific
stuff :
--- Stage 0 ---
1) The initial booting, which uses the kernel-image udeb, but is not
really part of the debian-installer, as far as i can tell.
--- Stage 1 ---
2) Initial hardware detection in stage 1, searches for the CDROM, or an
alternate way of loading in the udebs.
3) Anna loads in the udebs, and has support for per arch/subarch udebs
list.
--- Stage 2 ---
4) The keyboard chooser will propose keyboards accordying to your
arch/subarch.
5) Second stage hardware detection.
6) Partitioning and preparation of the filesystems.
7) boot-loader and kernel installation
--- Stage 3 ---
8) We reboot and run the normal base-install stuff, everything
arch/subarch specific should have been solved here, and this is not the
job of the debian-installer anyway.
Mmm, Peter, maybe you or someone could post or document what you showed
us on the Oldenburg blackboard.
Anyway, i am doing kernel stuff, so i am mostly interested in 1) as well
as 7). I suppose 4), 5) and 6) should be ok for oldworld pmacs, as well
as 3). 2) maybe problematic if the oldworld pmacs are not able to load
udebs from the cdrom drive.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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