Re: Right, so compiling my own kernel has b0rked my iMac. (was Help compiling a kernel for iMac rev B)

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamalprasad@verizon.net>]

    "Chris" == Chris Doherty <c_doherty@hotpop.com> writes:

You really are having all the luck....;-)

    Chris> On boot, whether I select the linux image or the old image,
    Chris> I get the following (I believe this is an OpenFirmware
    Chris> message):

I suspect that this is from yaboot (see my disclaimer at the end of
this email).

    Chris> /pci@80000000/mac-io@10/ide@20000/disk@0:4,/boot/initrd.img:No
    Chris> such file or directory (initrd.img.old if I try to boot the
    Chris> old kernel).

Is your root partition /dev/hda4 then?

Did the stock Debian kernel ever work? 

Could you post your /etc/yaboot.conf?

    Chris> Does anyone have any ideas on how I can rescue this iMac?
    Chris> And subsequently figure out what went wrong?

You can manually load the exact kernel and initrd image by hand at the
yaboot prompt if you know it really is there
http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/yaboot/doc/yaboot-howto.shtml/ch9.en.shtml#s9.3

Alternatively boot with debian installer, switch to a shell, mount the
disk and examine it to see what went wrong. If you mount at
/mnt/mydisk you could do something like

chroot /mnt/mydisk
mount -t proc proc /proc

and then install a stock kernel you know works, figure out how to fix
your yaboot.conf and run ybin again.

A word of caution: my first Linux on powerpc system experience is only
4 weeks old, I have to run out for the evening and cant run tests, so
some of this is from memory and perhaps not 100% accurate.

Cheers!
Shyamal