Re: Centris 650 Debian 10 SID Installation
On Sun, 9 Jun 2019, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
> The mailing list seems to have munged my message, adding extra question
> marks. I'm not sure why, maybe because my mail client formatted the
> message in HTML instead of plain text (sorry about that).
>
Probably something to do with Thunderbird on Mac OS X. I've seen this
before in Alpine.
> Anyway, here it is again, hopefully this will be more readable.
>
> And BTW, I'm not complaining about anything or suggesting that anyone
> isn't working very hard to provide a working GNU/Linux system forancient
> hardware. I'm just trying to figure out why it's not working and
> whether I'm doing something wrong. Thanks to all for your efforts.
>
No problem.
> -----
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to install
> "http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-05-24/debian-10.0-m68k-NETINST-1.iso";
>
I'll try it in QEMU.
> on a Centris 650 (136 MB, 4 GB root partition, 2 GB swap partition).
> My plan was to install and configure everything on the 650 (including
> replacing systemd with SysV init since systemd doesn't do well on slow,
> low-memory systems) and then create a filesystem image for my other,
> even slower, mac68k systems.
>
I agree.
Note that 2 GB of swap is excessive. If the system needs that much swap
then it will have effectively locked up anyway because writing and reading
that much storage at 0.5 MBps takes hours (not including CPU time).
I suggest approx. 2 times physical RAM. This also avoids wasting physical
RAM on large page tables required for all the unused virtual memory.
> After copying the kernel and initrd from CD to disk and booting with
> Penguin, the installation proceeded, though very slowly; at every
> re-draw of the screen, I could see each line being re-drawn.
The macfb frame buffer console is always slow to scroll and refresh, maybe
this is normal? You can ameliorate this by reducing the framebuffer color
depth.
> I tried twice using the stock CD-ROM drive and once using a more modern
> CD-ROM drive. In all three cases, installation of the basic system
> succeeded after about four hours, then stopped at the "Configure the
> package manager" menu -- "Your installation CD or DVD has been scanned
> ... Scan another CD or DVD?".
Maybe you need to use a different initrd? There are several on the ISO.
I'm no expert with the debian installer, but I suspect you should be using
the initrd for the netinst method (?)
> I selected "No" and hit return: no response, even after several hours.
> Hitting return repeatedly or trying to select "Yes" or "Go Back" also
> doesn't work, and eventually the arrow keys stop responding (though F1
> and F2 still work to move the selection left or right).
Weird.
> Switching to an alternate console didn't seem to work (or I was doing it
> wrong; I tried several combinations of ctrl-alt-f1,
> ctrl-alt-right_arrow, etc.).
>
That key combination is for xorg (X11). If you are using the framebuffer
console, you should use alt-f1, alt-f2 etc. or alt-arrow-key to switch
between virtual consoles.
> After one of the failures, I tried booting into the new system.
> Booting using the kernel from the CD didn't work -- there was a
> two-minute pause, which ended in a kernel panic after not finding a root
> filesystem (or any SCSI devices).
Can you capture this sequence using the serial console and post it here?
> Maybe that kernel only works for installation using the accompanying
> initrd?
No, the debian kernel works for other purposes too, but you would need to
generate a suitable initrd if you want to use it for other purposes.
I always build kernel binaries for Macs with all the Mac drivers built-in.
That way, no initrd should be needed.
> I next booted into the new system using a 5.x kernel, thinking that I
> could use apt-get to install everything else, but the keyboard map
> appeared to be wrong, so I couldn't log in at the VGA console.
>
Sounds like the installation didn't complete properly but it's hard to
say. A screen shot might be helpful here.
> I next tried booting using a serial console (console=ttyS0,9600n8).
> After the expected slowness of systemd bringing everything up (about
> eight minutes),
Right, systemd is hopeless on these machines. Not just because the CPU is
slow, but because systemd sets short timeouts on it's own units which
those units can't live up to. That means that systemd enforces policy that
excludes slow hardware.
> I see a login prompt on the VGA screen and on the serial console. The
> keymap on the VGA screen is wrong,
On the framebuffer console, what characters do you see when you type
"root"?
> but appears to be ok on the serial console; however, attempting to login
> using root or the regular user account set up during installation fails
> ("Login incorrect"). Apparently users and passwords had not been
> configured yet when the installation hung.
>
> Next I booted back into Debian 3.1 (using the same 5.x kernel) to see
> whether I could chroot to the new installation, add a new user and reset
> root's password. That worked.
>
Great!
> Booting back into the new installation, I'm able to log in as root at
> the serial console. I don't see an installer log (I can send that if
> someone knows where it is or how to access it from inside the installer
> that hung).
If the installation completed normally, the log would be found in the
target filesystem... please see
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s01.html.en
> The network is up, and apt-get works, but it doesn't find anything, even
> after adding these two lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ sid main
> deb-src http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ sid main
>
Looks ok to me...
Here's /etc/apt/sources.list from my debian/m68k system. Note that this is
'unstable' not 'sid'. I don't know whether 'sid' will work here or not; if
so that may be preferable.
# binary default
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unstable main
deb http://incoming.ports.debian.org/buildd/ unstable main
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unreleased main
# source
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://incoming.debian.org/debian-buildd/ buildd-unstable main
> Looking in a normal web browser, packages appear to be available in
> "http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/pool-m68k/main/";, but apt-get
> doesn't appear to see anything. Maybe there's a simple error in my
> sources.list?
>
Did you run "apt-get update" after editting sources.list?
--
> -Stan
>
>
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