Bug#264964: OldWorld PowerMac Debian-Install floppys
On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 11:55:28AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, August 11, 2004, at 05:25 AM, Sven Luther wrote:
>
> >On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 01:57:22AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >>Package: installation-reports
> >>
> >>I retrieved the floppy images at
> >>
> >> http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-i/images/daily/powerpc-
> >>small/floppy/
> >>
> >>so I could try out a floppy-boot install from them.
> >>
> >>I got never even got off the ground...
> >>
> >>1) The "boot.img' floppy seems to have nothing on it but the
> >>'vmlinuz' kernel. There's no system folder or any of the other
> >>boilerplate necessary for a bootable floppy. I understand that
> >>there are technical licensing problems with miboot. Nevertheless,
> >
> >Can you check in the logs to see what happened ? Mmm, indeed :
> >
> >http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-
> >i/images/daily/build_powerpc-small_floppy_boot.log
> >
> >shows :
> >
> ># We'd like to use miboot, but it isn't in the archive yet ...
> >#miboot -c ./tmp/powerpc-small_floppy_boot/miboot.conf
> ># ... so instead we do some grungy HFS hacking.
> >
> >I wonder who did that modification, and i probably pulled it in when
> >upgrading :/
> >
> >>there at least ought to be a README file somewhere that gives the
> >>adventurous user, willing to ignore the licensing problems, the
> >>necessary magic incantations to transform this neutered thing into
> >>a live/virile/bootable floppy by mixing it with miboot (however
> >>obtained) under the light of a full moon at midnight.
> >
> >What i would really like is to have miboot go at least to contrib
> >if not main.
> >The step to do this is for someone else than me though, or i would
> >not be able
> >to do the reimplementation. The idea is to look at the miboot boot
> >block
> >format, and extract the first header part (which is ok to reuse)
> >and the
> >little bit of code afterward, which are rumored to be trap calls
> >to the mac
> >rom, in m68k assembly. And describe what it is doing, so a clean-room
> >reimplementation can be done from it.
> >
> >>2) The 'root.img' file is bigger than will fit onto a 1.44 MB
> >>floppy. Worse, for all it's size, it seems to contain nothing but
> >>a 'lost+found' directory -- no install scripts or anything else!
> >>
> >>Is there a different place I should be getting the floppy images from?
> >
> >Nope, someone broke them, and svn seems broken right now :/
> >
> >BTW, can you look at the kernel found here :
> >
> >http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-
> >i/images/daily/powerpc/netboot/vmlinuz-coff.initrd
> >
> >and try to boot it from the serial console OF and write an
> >installation report ?
> >
> >Friendly,
> >
> >Sven Luther
>
>
> I'll look into making a null-modem (8-pin mini-din on both ends!)
> cable so I can use one machine as a serial console for the other.
> If I can do that, I'll give your suggestion a try.
>
> In the mean time, would it work with BootX?
No, don't think so, but the plain vmlinux/initrd.gz work with bootx.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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