On Saturday, September 11, 2004, at 07:11 AM, Russell Hires wrote:
P.S. <joking>When are you finally going to start work on the manual?</joking>All joking aside... That is an important task! But I kinda figured itwas less important than getting the software working at all on oldworldhardware, since I seem to be the only one on the list who has oldworld pmac hardware available for testing. If there were someone else who could do the testing part, I'd have time to work on the documentation part... Any takers out there? RickI've offered my services before in writing up some docs (or simply modifying the woody ones to fit the sarge install) in a couple ofprevious threads. Meanwhile, I'm running on a G3/266 that I'd be willingto test with. Also, I need help with setting my G3 to send output to a serial console, since the 2.6.x kernels don't give my voodoo3 card any console data. Russell
OK Russell, you're on! Here's what you need to do:First, google a bit to find and get copies of the distribution files for BootX, miboot, and quik -- the three boot-loaders that work on OldWorld PowerMacs. Read and try to understand the documentation that comes with the package distributions. Most of it is sketchy, but if you combine it with more googling for stuff in the various mailinglist archives (debian and YellowDog Linux, in particular, but also the PowerPC Linux mailing list and any other distros that support PowerPC, such as SuSE and Fedora) and there's useful (if anecdotal) stuff in several people's personal home web pages as well.
Retrieve and read the Apple Tech notes on Open Firmware. Start with TN1061 and follow pointers from there. There's also lots of useful stuff on the web. Google for "Open Firmware Apple macintosh". There are also some very useful docs about using OpenFirmware with NetBSD.
If you're really dedicated, the first stage should take you a couple of weeks.
Second, partition your disk so that you have plenty of free space to install test releases of Debian into. Each installation takes a minimum of about 1.5 GB -- more if you want to make it actually useful. So multiply 2-3 GB by the maximum number of test installations you intend to make before you wipe the disk and start over clean. On that disk (or another one dedicated to the purpose) also set up an HFS partition (*not* HFS-plus -- Debian does not at this time support access to HFS-plus filesystems from inside the installer) of about 1 GB (more if you want it to be actually useful other than as an intermediate boot loader. If you're going to run Toast here, you should allow plenty of space [gigabytes] for CD-images). Install MacOS-9 there. Then install BootX (both the BootX extension and the BootX.app application) according to the instructions you got with the BootX distribution. MacOS-X does not support BootX. (Unfortunately, part of the MacOS_X boot loader is called "bootx". It's not related to the one we are interested in here.)
Third, download the latest d-i businesscard iso, and burn it (I use Toast) to a CD-RW (don't waste a CD-R on it -- you're probably only going to use it a couple of times at most). Copy the kernel of your choice from the CD (install:powerpc:vmlinux or install:powerpc:2.4:vmlinux) into the "System Folder:Linux Kernels" folder of your MacOS-9 partition, and the initrd.gz file from the same place to the "System Folder:Linux Ramdisks" folder. Invoke BootX.app, set the appropriate parameters and let her rip. Answer the questions and file an installation report.
Dig out my previous d-i installation reports for OldWorld PowerPC installations from the mailing list archives. They may give you some useful hints.
Fourth, try a floppy disk install. Contact Sven for instructions on where to download the latest floppy images. Let it try to install the quik bootloader, and see if you can figure out how to make that work. If you succeed in this, let me know. I haven't gotten this far yet.
When you're completely familiar with all the various aspects of booting, you can start on re-writing a "D-I on OldWorld installation manual".
Contact me if you have questions at any point. I've left out a massive amount of detail!
Enjoy! Rick