Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

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

On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 03:32:18PM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Here's a thought.  First some background:
> 
> Last night, just to prove it could be done, I succeeded (first try) 
> in using BootX under MacOS9 on an OldWorld PowerMac G3 (beige 
> mini-tower) to load and run the debian-installer kernel and initrd 
> downloaded from:
> 
> 	<http://ftp.debian.org/dists/sarge/main/installer-
> powerpc/beta3/images/powerpc/netboot/>
> 
> I got as far as the point where the d-i tries to install a 
> bootloader. It died there because there is no boot loader for the 
> oldworld subarchitecture.
> 
> I could have done the same thing using miboot, but it would have 
> been *much* harder.  BootX has a nice Mac-like user friendly 
> interface.  Miboot most definitely does not.
> 
> The amount of MacOS actually needed for this is quite small.  With 
> a little work, I've gotten the corresponding thing for yellowdog 
> Linux down to under 50 MB and put it on a zip disk.
> 
> 
> 
> So here's my suggestion:
> 
> Declare that all OldWorld machines must have a minimal MacOS 
> partition with BootX as their "boot loader".  That is, If you want 
> to use debian-sarge on an OldWorld Mac, it presupposes that you 
> first have MacOS and BootX installed on that machine.
> 
> Do not provide BootX on the CD, just a note in the README document 
> that says you need it and how to download it from, say, "non-free" 
> or "contrib".
> 
> Now the part of debian-installer that died on me last night has an 
> easy fix:  Simply do not install any boot loader at all for that 
> subarchitecture.

Rick, Quik can easily be used to boot from CD, no problem, sadly it
cannot be used to boot from floppies, and thus cannot be used to install
debian on a blank disk.

Friendly,

Sven Luther