Bug#241228: Oldworld from floppy, installing the kernel fails
On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 07:12:21PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi Sven,
>
> > Well, the previous were built by Jeremie Koenig, while the later were
> > built by me :) I don't know what date the previous were built, but the
> > later are daily builds, so they should be more uptodate.
>
> Yeah, I know who built them ;-)
>
> Why do you both provide them ? Because we are at beta3 not beta6 ? It's kind
> of confusing for people lesser involved in debian(-installer).
>
> Your build is based on cvs (plus local changes) and automatic and Jeremies as
> well ? So "on a normal day" (which ain't exist) these two build should/could
> be the same ?
Ok, a bit of history is in order here. Previously, old wolrd was not
supported, and nobody cared about it. I have no hardware, and after a
bit of searching, Jeremie, who lives in strasbourg like me, offered to
lend me his box, but after a bit of discussion, he decided to do the
support himself, which suited me well since i had other stuff to do. He
thus became the official debian oldworld pmac guy :).
Now, he did some stuff and then nothing. As beta3 was approaching, i
urged him to send me the fixes, and last week or so, he worked out of
the subversion directory, and provided fixed patches that i commited
with a bit of adaptation. Previously, he was building those himself, and
eppesuig was doing the daily powerpc builds. Since eppesuigs daily built
were lacking a bit with regard to the new development of the powerpc
debian-installer, i did the daily build yesterday at unholy hours of the
night, and uploaded them. The plan is from now on, to either have me
continue the daily builds, or have eppesuig fix its setup and continue
doing them, thus there is no need for jeremie to provide the floppies
anymore.
> > > Installing sarge yesterday failed with the adduser-package not avaible
> > > for download. (which wasn't true, obviously.) after that the installer
> > > wasn't able to download a release-file, too. until I reconfigured the
> > > network (with dhcp as before)). very strange.
> > >
> > > So I tried to install sarge from cd (with cd-drivers.img) and also
> > > unstable via network, the results were the same as trying to install
> > > sarge from net (with net-drivers.img) today:
> > >
> > > Base systems installs ok until it reaches around 70% then it fails
> > > complaining that I try to install an initrd-kernel....
> > > ---begin_bla-----------------
> > > You are attempting to install an initrd kernel image (version
> > > 2.4.25-powerpc-small)
> > > This will not work unless you have configured your boot loader to use
> > > initrd. (An initrd image is a kernel image that expects to use an INITial
> > > Ram Disk to mount a minimal root file system into RAM and use that for
> > > booting).
> >
> > Oh, damnit, clue-less kernel-package has hit again.
>
> That's right ;)
>
> This also means you will fix it ?
Well, yeah, i suppose i have too, i am no perl guy though, and
kernel-package is an unmaintainable mess. Oh well.
> > > I repeat, You need to configure your boot loader -- please read your
> > > bootloader documentation for details on how to add initrd images.
> > >
> > > If you have already done so, and you wish to get rid of this message,
> > > please put
> > > `do_initrd = Yes'
> > > in /etc/kernel-img.conf. Note that this is optional, but if you do not,
> > > you'll continue to see this message whenever you install a kernel
> > > image using initrd.
> > > Do you want to stop now? [Y/n]n
> > > ---end_bla-----------------
> >
> > Does using testing instead of unstable change a thing for this.
>
> No.
Yeah, guessed so.
> > > So I installed kernel-images manuelly, called "quikconfig", edited
> > > /etc/quik.conf so it looks like this:
> > >
> > > ---begin_bla-----------------
> > > #root=/dev/hda2
> > > # Generated by quikconfig
> > > # (C) 1998 Matt McLean <keys@yikes.com>
> > > # partition=3
> > > # map=/boot/map
> > > timeout=20
> > > image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.25-powerpc-small
> > > label=Linux
> > > read-only
> > > append = " initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.25-powerpc-small video=atyfb"
> > > # don't know & care now, if the video-option is neccessary here...
> > > ---end_bla-----------------
> > >
> > > and set openfirmware like this:
> > >
> > > nvsetenv boot-device ata/ata-disk@0:0
> > > nvsetenv input-device kbd
> > > nvsetenv output-device screen
> > > nvsetenv boot-file "/boot/vmlinux-2.4.25-powerpc-small video=atyfb
> > > initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.25-powerpc-small"
> > >
> > > Booting the systems gets the following error: "VFS: Cannot open root
> > > device "" or 08:01"
> > > bla bla rebooting in 180seconds.
> > >
> > > (These settings do work on woody, but I only used them without "initrd="
> > > and with "root="...)
> >
> > Then do so here too. The message is wrong naturally, and you should boot
> > with root=/dev/hda<whatever you choose>.
>
> Really ? I use your kernel where the ide-drivers are build as modules so I
> have to use an initrd. Should I really append root=/dev/bla to the kernel
> command line and set this option in quik.conf ?
Oh ...
Yeah, ok i understand. I have not yet mastered the part with the initrd
thingy, this would be a good thing.
Another solution would be for base-installer to install the -powerpc
kernel on your box too, since the main reason to use the -powerpc-small
kernel is so that it will fit on a floppy with miboot.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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