APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Giorgio Terzi <dem5757@iperbole.bologna.it>]

Hello Sven,

In first i wish to thank you for your help and for your last 
e-mail. :)))

But let's speak about job.

The second goal is reached!

Now is possible to load & install Rescue & Driver images from 
floppies, CD-ROMS,HD-Partitions.
But to do this we must correct some bugs :

Bug 1: dbootstrap

The APUS rescue image is MSDOS formatted but in file
choose_medium.c from line 34 the code is so:
   #if cpu(sparc) || #cpu(powerpc)
   const char *fs_type_tab[] = {  "ext2", NULL };
   #else
   const char *fs_type_tab[] = { "msdos", "ext2", NULL };
   #endif
as you can understand is impossible for a powerpc machine
to load a msdos partition, so i have modified it so:
   #if cpu(sparc) || #cpu(powerpc)
   const char *fs_type_tab[] = { "msdos", "ext2", NULL };
   #else
   const char *fs_type_tab[] = { "msdos", "ext2", NULL };
   #endif
After this, rescue.bin was loaded and kernel extracted & configured.
I think this #if is obsolete because, as you will see some lines 
after in the source file , mount loops between the various filesystems
(msdos & ext2 now, but may will be more ?) attempting 
to load the image files.

For CD-ROM & for HD partition loading system the drivers was also
successfully loaded & configured. 
For CD-ROM i used my Potato CD-ROM N.1.For hard disk i have
built a debian tree in an Amiga partition.

Bug 2: floppy images build & configuration

After the kernel configuration, it was renamed as vmlinuz-2.2.19,
and this comes from the install.sh script. 
For APUS this name is wrong as it is really a 2.2.10 kernel.
Maybe it is possible to use the $subarch variable to distinguish the 
various powerpc kernel architecture's versions during the install.sh 
configuration ?

I have tested also the floppy disk use:

Bug 3: fd0 device problems

For APUS /dev/fd0 is unable to load the rescue floppy disk. 
I think it defaults to the Amiga floppy formats.
I must erase it and recreate it with 'mknod fd0 b 2 28'
that is the same of /dev/fd0u1440 in a "standard" installation.
 
After this change the rescue floppy was successfully loaded.

Bug 4: dboostrap problem.

dbootsrap was not able to recognize the driver's floppy disk
because the drivers' default names was treated as complete
names but they are really "root names" for example:
drv14           is a "root name"
drv14apus.bin   is a driver's complete name.
In file floppy_merge.c i have modified the line 197 :

   if (!strcmp (basenames[i], block.header.name))
as follows:
   if (!strncmp (basenames[i], block.header.name,strlen(basenames[i])))
            
after this i have also loaded the drivers!

I can't test network installations because at this moment i haven't it.
Next steps:
1) I shall take a look for ZIP installation.
2) I shall try to download the woody base_system and install it

Friendly,

-- 
                                                 Giorgio Terzi