Boot floppies 2.2.11 report (failure)
Hello,
I've been trying the 2.2.11 boot "floppies" from
www.debian.org/~cts/debian-m68k/boot-floppies on a Macintosh Quadra 700
but got stuck in the middle with a problem I wasn't able to work around.
(Note: I have a working potato upgraded from slink on this machine so
I don't need help to get it up. It was just a test.)
This is a complete report of what I did and what happened. Some of the
issues are probably not specific to the m68k port, but reporting
everything may make it easier to reproduce problems.
The base system, disk images etc. are on a local HFS volume. The
installation goes to a NFS share mounted on / since I don't have
disk space left to play around. Swap on local harddisk.
* Documentation:
- Something's gone wrong with mac-fdisk.txt (sized 1 byte) and
pmac-fdisk.txt (sized 26 bytes, reads "** man page not found **").
- debian-mac.txt needs to be updated. [I think this is known]
*Boot:
- Do the installation tools really have to reside in mac/install/mac/
(useless nesting) ?
- I'd prefer "default" Penguin prefs that won't ask me for real floppies.
- "Don't Disable Video Card VBL's" in the Penguin prefs shouldn't be
checked?
- There are two files called root.bin, a smaller one in mac/ and a larger
one in mac/images-1.44 . After a moment of confusion I decide the
difference is just empty space to fill up a floppy and use the smaller
one.
A later test with the larger one shows I've been right, but I have
to assign more memory to Penguin-17 than the default 2048/3072 k or
it can't allocate enough memory for kernel and the larger root image.
[Of course this is just a minor documentation issue.]
- Linux boots up cleanly and throws me into the installer.
* Configure the Keyboard:
- Several offered mac keymaps can't be loaded, e.g. both german ones.
Logging in on tty2 and fooling aroung with the busybox toy tar I notice
the mac tree of /etc/keymaps.tgz looks like the slink version. It contains
only mac/mac-us-std.bmap, mac/mac-us-ext.bmap and mac/mac-fr2-ext.bmap .
* Partition a Hard Disk:
- I don't have disk space left for playing with boot floppies. I want to
install on a root NFS partition for testing. But I drop into fdisk anyway
to list my local partitions and it works. Later on I notice we have a
separate menu entry for that. Cool. Works too.
* Initialize and Activate a Swap Partition:
- Auto-detects the already present swap partiton. Fine.
* Initialize a Linux Partition:
- Skipped this one.
* Mount a Previously-Initialized Partition:
- I select NFS, curious what will happen now without configured network.
Am being told I'll have to configure it first. Allright. Am positively
surprised to be thrown into the network configuration automatically. OK.
[I don't use DHCP or BOOTP so I can't say whether these work]. I can then
NFS mount the root partition.
* Install Operating System Kernel and Modules:
- I have the necessary files on a local HFS partition, so I choose
"partition on hard disk". Being prompted for a path, I'm surprised to see
/instmnt as the default. I expected to be asked for a path relative to the
partition, but this looks like a question for an absolute path. Switching
to tty2, I can check the HFS partiton is in fact mounted on /instmnt. Be
it. I have a directory mimicking a full Debian hierarchy on the partition
and enter its absolute path, starting with /instmnt. It seems to be
recognized because I am offered to choose the default stable archive,
which I do.
- Now comes up a funny dialog box stating "NFS install detected. Copying
mac/images-1.44/rescue.bin to local before processing...".
That's ridiculous because there's nothing local to copy to and maybe
the cause for the trouble that follows. [But most probably not m68k
specific.]
- The mac sleeps (works?) for some time, then tells me "Unable to
mount the rescue floppy. You may have inserted the wrong floppy. Please
try again." - yuck. Switching to tty3, I can see that "Mounting /dev/ram
on /floppy failed: Invalid argument" twice.
Pressing Continue, I'm prompted for a floppy drive (fd0, fd1, sfd0) to
read the rescue floppy. Funny thought without a working floppy driver,
cancelling out.
Switching to tty2 I try to mount /dev/ram on /floppy manually, which
fails again with "Invalid argument". But after mounting my HFS partition
on /mnt and dd'ing rescue.bin into /dev/ram I CAN mount /dev/ram on
/floppy, so I guess dbootstrap somehow failed to read rescue.bin .
I try the menu item several times, sometimes with a handpicked path,
sometimes with the default. Nope. Another look at tty3 reveals two things:
a. Some lines stating "extracting Rescue Floppy from non-floppy device
/instmnt/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current failed with 1".
So dbootstrap wants to dd a DIRECTORY to /dev/ram ? [Could be m68k
specific due to more complicated directory layout.]
The path I've entered was /instmnt/Programme/test, this is exactly the
start of my Debian tree when dbootstrap mounts the HFS partition and I'm
pretty sure I have the right files in the right places. See a ls -R
(different mount point, used working potato) at the end and correct me if
I'm wrong.
b. Even though I tried exactly the same procedure several times, the error
messages on tty3 kept changing from attempt to attempt (a changing subset
of the same 5 messages). Same with /var/log/messages. It seems syslogd
eats up some of the messages.
[In the meantime I have confirmed this. There are reasons to believe
it's not m68k-specific so I've reported a bug against boot-floppies.]
Mounting the HFS partition by hand and using "already mounted partiton"
gave the same results.
- I haven't been able to proceed beyond this point.
Following ls -R of the "Debian" tree:
----------------------------------------------------------------
/mac/Programme/test:
dists
/mac/Programme/test/dists:
potato
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato:
main
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main:
disks-m68k
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k:
current
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current:
base2_2.tgz
mac
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current/mac:
drivers.tgz
images-1.44
install
linux
macinstall-floppy-hfs.img
root.bin
sysmap.gz
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current/mac/images-1.44:
driver.bin
rescue.bin
root.bin
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current/mac/install:
mac
/mac/Programme/test/dists/potato/main/disks-m68k/current/mac/install/mac:
Penguin Prefs
Penguin-17
Penguin-17.hqx
Penguin_Prefs.hqx
Penguin_Prefs_(autoboot).hqx
Penguin_Prefs_CD.hqx
Penguin_Prefs_CD_autoboot.hqx
debian-mac.txt
my Penguin Prefs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regards,
Bjoern Brill
Please CC: me in replies as I'm not subscribed to this list.
--
Bj"orn Brill <brill@fs.math.uni-frankfurt.de>
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
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