Linux Luddite Trying to Install on PowerBook 190

[Dan@canford.com (Dan)]

Hi All,
	This is my first post so please excuse my stupidity/lack of experience.

Have decided for my sins to plunge head-first into the world of Linux. I
work in a school in the UK and have raided our 'store' of old junk and
have come out with a bashed PowerBook 190. Present config is 20MB RAM,
750MB HD, usual PowerBook 190 in every way. Connected to this I have a
external 2GB SCSI HD (so I can swap kernels about easily) and an old Apple
CD 300e (with the Debian disk 1 in it). I have tried without these plugged
in, nothing different happens.

So...

I downloaded the debian CD off of the web, burnt onto CD and have now 2
shiny CDs with Debian on it. Have partitioned the hard disk with 25MB for
Mac OS, 40MB A/UX swap disk and the rest (roughly 706MB) A/UX root. 
Everything fine. Have downloaded (and read) the install guide, etc, etc. 

I downloaded the updated Linux Kernel from the mac.linux-m68k ftp site. I
downloaded all v2.3 kernels that were available.

On the Mac OS area I have installed Penguin 18, the debian installer
RAMdisk, the base2_2.tgz file, and any appropriate kernels.

My problem...

Linux starts fine, however no matter which kernel I use it just doesn't
quite get there.  If I use the v2.3 kernels, they do something and then
have a heart-attack. The one I have had most success with is
vmlinux-2.3.18-19991001.gz. Ungzipped it is just vmlinux. If I use the
earlier 2.3.11 or 12 kernels it crashes (or hangs indefinately when it
hits the PowerBook IDE interface. The 2.3.18 kernel does fine, sees the
IDE (sees the internal disk and all partitions), SCSI (sees & identifies
ext HD & partitions and the CD drive), ADB (sees keyboard, trackpad and
mouse), in fact seemingly everything, however at the last moment it gets
lost in a loop (kernel panic?) with the following message...

before here lots of linux boot text, everything seemingly OK.

VFS: mounted root (minix filesystem) readonly
kmod : failed to exec /sbin/modprobe/ -s -k binfmt-0000, errno = 12
kmod : failed to exec /sbin/modprobe/ -s -k binfmt-0000, errno = 8

This then proceeds to loop arround the same message with errno 8 or 12.
For ever.

I have tried different ramdisks, kernels, penguins, with the external
devices, without, with mouse plugged in, without, to no avail.

So....  what I am asking is , has anyone ever got a PB190 working?? and if
so can you please tell me the appropriate kernels, ramdisk, penguin, etc,
and where I can get these.

Thanks for your time

Dan Hawker
ICT, Canford School, UK

dan@canford.com