Installing debian sid on a p5 520 (with a 64 bit userland) - a few hurdles, but it works
This is how I got there...
** Installing a base system **
1st, I needed a CD I was sure I could boot off one of my p5 partitions..
Went ahead and got myself a pre-built d-i boot snapshot from
http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-i/images/2006-03-21/powerpc64/netboot64/
(the one from today apparently doesn't build)..
From there, I created a bootable CD with "mkisofs -chrp-boot"
At this point I booted the CD and was greeted with the familiar d-i
install screens..
During base system install, I had to skip selecting the kernel..
(mkinitramfs-tools was missing).. Therefore, I went into a shell,
chrooted to the target, went ahead and apt-got the latest kernel (which
in turn got me the right initramfs generator).. I dd'ed yaboot onto my
chrp boot partition and tweaked my yaboot.conf (the one installed by d-i
seems somewhat bogus - yaboot barfs on it at boot time)..
I mknod'ed my virtual console (mknod /dev/hvc0 b 239 0), added the
appropriate line to /etc/inittab and to /etc/securetty
Finally, I tweaked /etc/nework/interface to not attempt to use hotplug
(for some reason I didn't bother to look into, this doesn't work for me).
Also, I wound up with the latest 2.6.16 (even tried vserver [1] ! it's
fun !)
** Going to 64 bit userland **
I wanted a system with the 64 bit packages installed.. (the ones on
alioth).. So I went ahead, searched a bit and came up with this :
1) I used a second disk (remember, this is a p5 with virtualization, so
adding a scsi disk a simply a matter of adding a disk slice in the
virtual I/O server) that I partitioned the same way as the 1st one (1
chrp boot partition, 1 root fs, 1 swap)..
2) I mounted it and debootstrap'ed the root such as described in
"http://debian-ppc64.alioth.debian.org/READ_ME";.. At this point, the
debootstrap failed late in the process, but it was far enough to be
recoverable (updated /target/etc/apt/source.lst, chroot, apt-get -f
install, dpkg-reconfigure -a and finally mv /sbin/start-stop-daemon.REAL
/sbin/start-stop-daemon).. I then did the same tweaking I did with the
base system (hvc0 stuff, network, etc..)..
3) Copied the modules from the original system to the new system
4) Added the new root to yaboot
Rebooted and used the new root..
Well, it works quite well now ! (I can compile 64 bit stuff without any
library issues, etc..).. There are probably a few loose ends, but no
show stopper.
The good news : I'm going to be able to ditch that old SLES9[2] which I
got as part of my p5 but which has expired.. (meaning no more updates..)
--Ivan
[1] Even tried using the alioth "ppc64" stuff on vserver.. And it works
too (although it's a bit tricky to get it to work)..
[2] Well.. The only thing is now is that, apparently, I'm not going to
be able to use the IBM RSCT and CSM functions (which are used for DLPAR
and which are OCO stuff only available for SuSe and RH).. But I'll live.
PS : I found a wealth of info on
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pow-linuxdistros.html
(a bit outdated - but it's understandable since things tend to be moving ultra fast !)
But there are loads of pages describing the various potholes and how to avoid them..
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