Bug#226419: install-doc: [MIPS] missing module/configuration information.
Package: install-doc
Version: 3.0.23
Severity: normal
I just installed Debian/MIPS/stable on an Indy (then upgraded to
unstable, which was an adventure for another bug report).
It would be helpful if the installation manual mentioned in the
'modconf' section that 'hal2' (which uses 'soundconf') is the
module providing sound support on the SGI Indy. You probably
also want to add users to the 'audio' group.
For X configuration, the driver to use on the Indy is 'newport'.
The best information on X-on-Indy (and Indigo2) is:
http://honk.physik.uni-konstanz.de/~agx/linux-mips/xfree86/
In the partitioning section, a sample disk partition would be
extremely useful. For my system:
---
indy# fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb (SGI disk label): 66 heads, 62 sectors, 1008 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4092 * 512 bytes
----- partitions -----
Pt# Device Info Start End Sectors Id System
1: /dev/sdb1 boot 5 928 3779541 83 Linux native
2: /dev/sdb2 swap 929 1007 324735 82 Linux swap
9: /dev/sdb3 0 4 20460 0 SGI volhdr
11: /dev/sdb4 0 1007 4124736 6 SGI volume
----- Bootinfo -----
Bootfile: /unix
----- Directory Entries -----
0: linux sector 4 size 2031824
1: newlinux sector 3973 size 2627527
Command (m for help): q
indy#
----
The information I needed (which the manual did not explain) were:
a) partitions start at 1, despite the special 'volume header'
partitions at 9 and 11, and user partitions 'overlap' with
9 and 11 in a way that's best shown by example above.
b) It's not enough that the swap partition be named 'swap', it
must also have type 82. [I was misled here by installing
Debian/PowerPC immediately prior.]
c) It doesn't matter that the 'Bootfile' parameter doesn't match the
name of the boot kernel.
I forget if the manual includes sufficient information on dvhtool, but
a sample invocation can't hurt if it's currently missing:
indy# dvhtool -d /dev/sdb --unix-to-vh /boot/vmlinux-2.4.22-r4k-ip22 linux
Finally, I found the following information on the Indy's boot prom
helpful:
IRIX manual on the use of the PROM:
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=0650&db=bks&fname=/SGI_Admin/IA_ConfigOps/ch09.html
Resetting a bad ethernet address in the PROM (caused by dead batteries, etc)
http://www.sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue/2000-November/003661.html
Proper PROM boot options for linux:
http://honk.physik.uni-konstanz.de/linux-mips/indy-boot/indy-hd-boot-micro-howto.html
In particular, for my case (booting off sdb1, scsi id 4; note that
partition(8) corresponds to what fdisk called partition 9):
setenv OSLoader linux
setenv SystemPartition scsi(0)disk(4)rdisk(0)partition(8)
setenv OSLoadPartition /dev/sdb1
setenv OSLoadOptions ""
where OSLoadOptions contains the linux boot arguments, if any.
Hopefully this information will help future Debian/MIPS installers.
--scott
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: mips
Kernel: Linux indy 2.4.22-r4k-ip22 #1 Mon Dec 1 20:24:13 CET 2003 mips
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
-- no debconf information
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