Re: new installer
On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 12:33:53AM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 10:19:58AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > a .coff kernel won't autoboot, the user would have to manually get
> > > into OpenFirmware and boot it explicity.
> >
> > Ok, the .coff is for manual installation using the OF.
>
> yes which is unprecedented for oldworlds.
Huh ???
> > > the current miboot boot floppies require the vmlinux binary, which may
> > > be gzipped.
> >
> > Mmm, i am lost here, i own no powermac hardware of any kind (but would
> > gladly accept donation of such to test the debian powerpc kernels on),
> > and i thought that, until yaboot2 is working, you use yaboot on newworld
> > powermacs, which don't support compressed kernels.
>
> currently oldworlds boot via a non-OF based bootloader called miboot,
Ah, ok.
> its a MacOSROM based bootloader (and thus as fundementally flawed as
> BootX), its advantage is you can stick a miboot floppy in the drive
> and it will boot, without hacking. the OF method will REQUIRE that
> the user connect a serial terminal to access OpenFirmware. this may
> well end up being what will have to happen in the long run anyway,
> macos based booting is a can of worms that is likly to just go away.
>
> > I thought oldpmac hardware used quik, but there is also bootx and now
> > miboot. So, when using quick, what is kernel that is needed ?
>
> miboot can only be used on floppies, for anything else proprietary
> Apple disk code is required on the disk, cd whatever.
>
> quik is the only usuable option for disk booting. (until yaboot2,
> which will happen in 2037 at the current rate).
I am currently doing kernel work, but i plan to look at
yaboot2/prom-libc after that, as i told you, altough i told you i would
have time in september, which is obviously missing. But it will in any
case be too late for the sarge release, so ...
> BootX is a macos program and is thus irrelevant to debian.
Not so, it could be used to boot the initial installation disk, could it
not ? You create a bootx directory or image or whatever, and then start
that, which will follow up to install debian and quik or whatever.
Does BootX also work on newworld ?
> > If i look at the kernel's arch/ppc/boot/images, i get :
> >
> > 1602678 miboot.image
> > 2291148 vmlinux.coff
> > 2360440 vmlinux.elf-pmac
> > 1602433 vmlinux.gz
> > 2360304 zImage.chrp
> > 2360304 zImage.chrp-rs6k
> > 12 zImage.pmac -> vmlinux.coff
> > 1655582 zImage.prep
>
> all irrelevant. look at vmlinux a the root of the source tree.
All irrelevant to you maybe, but i need to build kernels for all
architecture from a single kernel build on a single subarch (this being
a CHRP based pegasos), so i need to look into this, or i will simply
ship the chrp kernel, which will not work for other ppc subarches.
> > (Notice, these are not the kernel image, but my own build tree, so the
> > sizes are bigger).
> >
> > So, i thought we had kernels for chrp, prep and chrp-rs6k, the
> > uncompressed elf-pmac for yaboot, and the .coff image.
>
> yaboot (and quik, and miboot) requires the vmlinux at the root of the
> source tree. all that crap in arch/ppc is irrlevant and unusable for
> bootloaders.
But for miboot it can be compressed ? What about quick ?
> > This leaves the miboot.image and the vmlinux.gz i don't know anything
> > about.
>
> both wrong.
What are these for then ?
> > No oldpmac user does, that is, we have suppport for newworld, probably
> > both chrp as well as prep, and pegasos.
>
> newworld support is very broken in d-i from my last look at the
> retarded mess that is yaboot-installer. whoever got ahold of that has
> obviously NEVER read one line of yaboot documentation, nor ever looked
> at the yaboot package.
Hey come on, insulting people is not a good way of going forward, and in
general gives other a bad opinion of you. And it seems that work about
yaboot-installer was done at Oldenburg, and it is supposed to be fixed
now. I have seen d-i boot on newpmacs and pegasos, and will try out apus
nextly.
> > So, most probably d-i for sarge will support those arches or subarches
> > for people who care about it.
>
> thats generally how debian works, only things people care about are supported.
Well, not really, i only care about chrp/pegasos kernels myself, but i
support pmac kernels in the kernel-images, and hope to support all
powerpc subarches nextly.
The most funny was the guy telling us to use yaboot2 and that d-i was
just crap.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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