(I'm CC'ing you on this first mail; for any follow-ups I'll assume you are subscribed to the list.) On Tuesday 17 April 2007 22:22, Gerhard Pircher wrote: > I know that cross-posting is not wanted (I posted this message already > on debian-powerpc with the title "Help needed for Debian AmigaOne > support"), but I guess debian-powerpc is more "user" oriented (correct > me if I'm wrong). No, the debian-powerpc list should also be a porter list and be able to help with porting issues, but in general you can just not force people to care about your pet project: if nobody replies that could just mean that nobody was interested enough in the issue... > I'm asking for help to add support for the AmigaOne (desktop PPC) to > Debian GNU/Linux. Currently AmigaOne users have to install a Debian > Woody base system, before they can upgrade to/install sarge or etch > (also there is no other GNU/Linux distribution available for the A1 ATM > and therefore A1 users are pushing me to create a Debian install CD ;) > ). As long as you realize that you (AmigaOne community, not necessarily you personally) will have to do most of the actual work and research yourself, you are very welcome to do so. > I took a look at the Debian installer and the kernel build package > (make-kpkg) and found some C-code/scripts/makefiles/etc. that would > have to be modified, as the AmigaOne is identified as an 68k Amiga/APUS > system (which is totally wrong). Also support for U-boot (A1 firmware) > images would have to be added to make-kpkg. A special bootloader > package should not be necessary, since U-boot supports PReP boot > partitions and AmigaOS4 comes with a second level bootloader with ext3 > support. > > A problem may be the Linux kernel for the A1. Currently only kernel > versions up to 2.6.16.x are working on the A1 (more or less due to the > ppc to powerpc architecture change in the Linux kernel), but I'm > planning to start on AmigaOne support for the powerpc architecture as > soon as kernel 2.6.22 is out. The A1 platform code is not in the > official Linux kernel tree - I hope this is not a criterion for its > inclusion in Debian (albeit it makes things harder). The first step is the kernel. Without official support in the current Debian kernel packages there is no point in even starting on inclusion in the installer. For help with the kernel you should contact the debian-kernel list, or possibly the debian-powerpc list. Note that for Debian kernel support any patches to the kernel source code will need to be pushed upstream into official kernel releases. The kernel team does not accept major patches just for Debian. You also say that "support for A1 firmware" needs to be included. Inclusion of firmware itself is in general an extremely difficult subject because of licencing and sourcecode issues; it's not completely clear what you mean by "support" though. There is also the issue that the powerpc kernel already has a lot of different flavors and there may be some resistance to adding another one if that should be needed. > I would be grateful, if somebody could help me with the modifications > on the debian-installer and the make-kpkg package, as I have no > experience with building debian (installer) packages and CD images yet. General information on building the installer is available in: http://people.debian.org/~fjp/talks/debconf6/paper/ It is also possible to build installer images using a custom kernel. Basic instructions for that are at: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel Cheers, FJP
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