Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

[Rick Thomas <rbthomas55@pobox.com>]

Joey Hess wrote:
> 
> Rick Thomas wrote:
> > I got as far as the point where the d-i tries to install a
> > bootloader. It died there because there is no boot loader for the
> > oldworld subarchitecture.
> 
> It's good to know that it got that far.
> 
> > Declare that all OldWorld machines must have a minimal MacOS
> > partition with BootX as their "boot loader".  That is, If you want
> > to use debian-sarge on an OldWorld Mac, it presupposes that you
> > first have MacOS and BootX installed on that machine.
> >
> > Do not provide BootX on the CD, just a note in the README document
> > that says you need it and how to download it from, say, "non-free"
> > or "contrib".
> 
> This seems eminently reasonable. I'll note that there exists x86
> hardware with some of the same issues: you can currently only install
> Debian on it if some other non-free OS is installed first.

Thanks!

> 
> > Now the part of debian-installer that died on me last night has an
> > easy fix:  Simply do not install any boot loader at all for that
> > subarchitecture.
> 
> I'm suprised this didn't already work; we have an option that is
> supposed to kick in if no other bootloader installer is available. It
> should have shown up on the menu as "Continue without boot loader", or
> been automatically run.


There is a "continue without boot loader" option on the main menu,
but the main menu doesn't show up by default.  You have to ask for
it in the kernel boot options -- or wait for an error to occur. 
In any case, it wasn't obvious when or how I was supposed to
invoke "continue without...", and before I knew what was
happening, the bootloader installer had blown up in my face.

What should I have done differently?

Rick