Re: new installer

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

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 02:07:57AM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 11:29:43AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> vmlinux at root of source tree.  initrd is supported.
> 
> >   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.
> 
> check penguinppc.org/projects/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 ?
> 
> vmlinux at root of source tree, initrd is only supported as a
> secondary floppy the same way as x86 rescue + root is done.
> 
> >   plain OF : uses the .coff kernel, and apparently only works over a
> >   serial OF console.
> 
> all oldworlds default to sending OF out the serial port, booting a
> coff kernel must be done manually at the OF console, which you can't
> see without a serial terminal by default.

So what this boils too, is that for old-world pmac support, there is not
much to be done :

  1) Kernel : create one more kernel-image udeb, which contains a
  compressed vmlinux udeb for miboot.

  2) boot-loader installer : someone write a proper quik-installer, and
  this one gets called on pmac hardware.

As for the pre-boot stuff, there is three ways of booting that need to
be documented (mostly done in the woody install documentation) and we
need to build the stuff needed by the user.

  1) miboot booting : needs to get the kernel from the
  kernel-image-pmac-miboot udeb, or gzip the one from the
  kernel-image-pmac, and create two floppy images of it and the initrd.

  2) bootx install : just put the standard pmac kernel and the initrd
  somewhere together with documentation on how to get bootx.

  3) serial OF install : uses the .coff kernel, need to create an udeb
  using it.

I will create the needed stuff from the kernels, i would like someone
with oldpmac hardware to confirm that by just compressing the vmlinux
kernel and putting it on a miboot floopy it will work though.

Someone else need to do the quik-installer though, and well, the
pre-boot stuff is not all that difficult.

Friendly,

Sven Luther