Re: progress report on debian/powerpc/apus boot-floppies.
On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 08:45:10PM -0500, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> writes:
>
> > pb3 : When i call partition the harddisk, cfdisk is called, and not
> > amiga-fdisk, like it should be. cfdisk don't know anything about
> > amiga partitioned harddisks.
>
> Have you fixed this in dbootstrap yet? It should be fairly trivial to
> fix. I don't wanna mess with ports I don't understand.
Not yet. I am still trying to understand how all this works. There is a line
in dbootstrap, telling the menu system that if the arch is ppc, you have to
use cfdisk ? is that it ? will try to send you a fix then.
> > There is a minor problem also on
> > scripts/rootdisk/fdisk-powerpc which becomes /sbin/fdisk, but even
> > fixing this don't seem to influence the "partition the harddisk"
> > menu option. Strange since a manual call to fdisk finds the correct
> > amiga-fdisk (or don't find it).
>
> Is this still the case? libfdisk uses /proc to determine viable
> install candidates etc.
I was told that the amiga-partition support of libfdisk is read only, is this
really the case ? Maybe the proc reading stuff don't know about powerpc/apus
yet ? Will have a more detailed look at it after you release 2.2.5, is that ok
?
> > There is something i don't understand here, what is libfdisk for in the
> > busybox, i can read the partition correctly (with the menu option view the
> > partition table) but not set it. If the busybox has a working fdisk, why is
> > fdisk included in the boot floppies ?
>
> libfdisk != fdisk
>
> libsfdisk IIRC was intended one day to be a general fdisk library for
> use in cfdisk, fdisk, etc, but I think that's stalled.
>
> Less code in boot-floppies the bettter. Less for us to maintain and
> debug.
Ok but, this don't respond to my question.
> > pb5 : When installing the kernel, it searches for disks-1.44/rescue.bin, which
> > should be resc1440apus.bin.
>
> Is apus a subarch? The file must be moved to
> apus/disks-1.44/rescue.bin . Hack on 'make release' for your arch to
> fix this. old file names like resc1440apus.bin are not supported.
Is this the way of doing the right thing accepted by all arches ? i will not
do stuff that is not accepted by the generic powerpc boot-floppies workers ?
but then if they think it is ok to do this, i will do it.
> > Anyway, would be better to search for the
> > linuxapus binary and the drivers.tgz file, or even only the driver.tgz, since
> > we don't have lilo, and a kernel on the ext2 partition is only a waste of
> > space.
>
> Interesting. Well, it would be apus/linux btw... Not a bad idea, if
> anyone manages to get it coded up.
I will do it, if someone give me some hints in where tho look for it. This
should not be apus specific, i think m68k folk would be interested also, as
well as some other archs, from a previous message i heard here.
> > Is it possible to change that menu option to "install the kernel
> > modules" or something such, and go searching for drivers.tgz only, for
> > architectures not supporting lilo or similar ?
>
> Um, you still need a kernel to boot from don't you?
Yes, but the kernel is on a amigaos partition, and could be the same you need
anyway to boot the ramdisk. Again this is similar to what is done on m68k.
Maybe other folk to (those booting from loadlin or some other such stuff for
example).
> > pb6 : there are a lot of menu choices that don't make sense on my
> > arch/subarch. This include the precedent Install OS kernel &
> > modules, but also "make linux bootable directly from harddisk",
> > "make boot floppy", "eject floppy disks" and "configure pcmcia
> > support".
>
> Sure... just hack on utilities/dbootstrap/main_menu.c.
Ok, will give it a try, but still something more modular and simple woudl be
better, how, well, for next release maybe.
> > Would be nice to add a "configure the bootstrap system" or
> > something such, who would mount a bootable affs partition (for apus
> > or m68k/amiga), and do the appropriate stuff to make it work.
>
> Not sure what you're talking about.
We use a bootstrap program to launch linux from amigaos. You could mount a
correct amigaos partition, install the bootsrap program and needed file, and
produce a small script with the correct arguments to bootstrap. But then maybe
this is better stuff for the next release.
> > How
> > can i modify this stuff ? it is in utilities/dbootstrap, right ?
>
> Right. You have CVS don't you? do you have access? Write access?
> if you have an account on VA, you should.
I have cvs and know how to use it. i have an account on va, altough va was
unrecheable for me yesterday, but could you give me a pointer on how to setup
it (like the CVSROOT setting and other such, but then maybe it is in
README.cvs, will have to check).
> > pb7 : There is arch specific stuff in scripts/rootdisks. But, at least for
> > powerpc, we have one rootdisk per subarch, which makes sense, since on apus,
> > mac-fdisk, pcmcia_cs and eject are not needed, while amiga-fdisk seems to be.
> > Would it not be better if we could differenciate between subarches, or is the
> > plan to have a common rootdisk per arch. It should be possible, now that we
> > removed the kernel from the rootdisk.
>
> I dunno -- however you guys wanna handle it. One rootdisk per subarch
> sounds good to me but we might need to worry a bit about how the files
> would lay out and/or how dbootstrap searches for files.
This needs to be discussed with the arch boot-floppies guys, but i guess it
should be possible to have a common root disk. at least the current powerpc
root disk is 1.2mb, and if i add amiga-fdisk, it should be ok for apus. Don't
know about the other subarches.
> > pb8 : MAX_DISKNAME_LEN is still not defined, but i guess it is in cvs. Will
> > have to get the cvs version. How do i do that (i had a mail with it, but lost
> > my mail archive yesterday ...:())
>
> See below.
>
Thnks, ...
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