Re: fail to boot on harddrive with a Performa 6400
On 24-Aug-2001 Chris Tillman wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> Could someone help me for the following problem, please?
>>
>> I am a system administrator in a University and I tried to install Debian
>> PPC (potato and woody) on some Performa 6400... the installation went
>> relatively well with the potato boot floppies, but I have been unable to
>> make it boot from the harddrive.
>> I would like to use quik and not BootX since I don't want to let MacOS
>> available on them.
>>
>> I have tried any possible configuration or trick from a lot of
>> documentation sources:
>> http://penguinppc.org/usr/quik
>> http://penguinppc.org/usr/quik/quirks.shtml
>> http://lppcfom.sourceforge.net/
>> etc...
>>
>> (the Open Firmware on Performa 6400 is 2.0)
>
> I have the same OF version on my PowerBase clone, FWIW
>
and do you use quik to boot?
>>
>> Some people reported success making it boot (but maybe not with quik).
>>
>> I saw that I should change load-base to 100000, keep input-device and
>> output-device
>> to ttya, I removed the modem to see if it would change something, I upgraded
>> to woody to have a newer version of quik...
>
> For Debian, I haven't seen any docs recommending a load-base change, in fact
> I think I recall that was not recommended. As far as input-device and
> output-device, the NetBSD page offers:
for load-base, I saw this on:
http://penguinppc.org/usr/quik/quirks.shtml
and in various comments on http://lppcfom.sourceforge.net/
but I will try again without changing it.
>
> ---- http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html
>
> Open Firmware output-device defaults to ttya, but ttya is the internal
> modem (if installed). Thus, if you have an internal modem, use Boot
> Variables to set console to ttyb.
> ----
ok, I will try with ttyb.
>
> I believe it would not make a difference whether the modem was actually
> there or not. The above advice is in regards to being able to see the Open
> Firmware command line. It also mentions:
>
> ---- http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html
>
> NetBSD may not boot if screen/kbd are used (use ttya or ttyb for your
> console)
> ----
>
> That would mean hooking up another computer to a serial port to be able to
> see the OF command line.
>
> But, quik would prevent you from having to do any of that if it was working
> on your machine. Which version of quik and boot-floppies are you using? I
> think Ethan did some work last month on it, though I can't locate it in CVS
> to check.
I used quik from potato (I can't find the version it was), and quik 2.0e-0.5
from woody (it seems to be the last version).
>
>> ----- mac-fdisk ----------------
>> [...]
> Since you've evicted MacOS, you can also get rid of the driver and patch
> partitions. But that wouldn't cause this problem I don't think.
exact. I installed Linux on another one of this same powermac model, but
without these paritions and the result is exactly the same.
>
>>
>> ----- of variables -------------
>> nvsetenv load-base 0x100000
>> nvsetenv boot-device "ata/ATA-Disk@0:0"
>> nvsetenv boot-file "ata/ATA-Disk@0:6/boot/vmlinux-2.2.19 root=/dev/hda6"
>> --------------------------------
>>
>
> Maybe try nvsetenv (no parameters)? This will show all the nvram settings.
> Then see what they are after quik runs?
Yes, I wrote the three lines above just to show how I change the variables but
I often use nvsetenv without parameters to see the settings state and to
experiment.
And you think it is possible that quik change them? I didn't know that. I will
take a look.
> If you have another untouched
> machine, maybe boot the installer there just to see what the virgin settings
> are like?
yes, I know what they are like. I change just the three above (load-base,
boot-device, boot-file) because the other ones do not seem usefull in my problem
(althought I made a lot of tests with them before, with the boot-prompt
activated).
thanks a lot for your time. I will continue to make some test and I will inform
you if it works.
> *----------------------------------------------------------------*
>| .''`. | Debian GNU/Linux: <http://www.debian.org> |
>| : :' : | debian-imac: <http://debian-imac.sourceforge.net> |
>| `. `'` | . oo Chris Tillman |
>| `- | ( -) tillman@azstarnet.com |
> *----------------"--"--------------------------------------------*
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