Bug#273986: Quasi-successful Installation - Sarge netinst rc1 on Beige G3
Hi Rick,
On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 02:32:56AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
>
> Do you mean the 2.6 floppy disks? I haven't been able to get them
> to work. The 2.6 "boot" floppy (the "ofonlyboot" floppy as well)
> starts reading OK but ends with the screen colors inverted and
> hangs. It never ejects the "boot" floppy or switches to the text
> screen. Do you know how to get around this?
Yes, the floppy (ofbootonly.img).
See...
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2004/09/msg00650.html
> The 2.4 floppy set works fairly well, though there's still one
> show-stopper problem. It can't seem to find my IDE disk. I'll be
> submitting an install report on my experiences soon.
>
> If you're talking about the CDs (businesscard or netinst) I agree
> with you. 2.6 is very nice. A CD-based 2.6 install from BootX is,
> for an experienced user, almost completely trouble-free.
>
> That said, there are some serious "usability" issues for a novice
> user (Fortunately, these issues are largely shared with the "x86"
> version -- so I have confidence that they will be fixed before
> release.) and the PowerPC sections of the manual need to be
> completely re-written for Sarge. The current one has lots of
> "Woody"-isms and and not a few "x86"-isms that need to be weeded
> out and re-written for Sarge and PowerPC/Mac.
Yes.
> >Do you know how I could test the netboot images. I'm not there yet. Do
> >they allow mounting a source nfs export? I've been inching my way there
> >because I'll eventually load up all my cluster nodes in this fashion.
>
> I haven't tried netboot for Linux yet. (I assume you are talking
> about telling Open Firmware to get its kernel and initrd via tftp
> from the net, then getting the rest via NFS -- or something like
> that.) I've done it for Solaris on Sparc hardware, but never for
> Linux. My aversion to Apple's buggy Open Firmware implementations
> is showing, I guess.
>
> If I had to make netboot work, I think I'd try it once on an x86
> box first, just to see how it's "supposed" to work for debian.
> You'll probably want to get some experience with the "mkinitrd(8)"
> command as well. I expect you'll have to hand-craft your own
> initial ram-disk images. The current floppy and/or CD-rom initrd
> images won't be much help for a netboot.
That sounds right. I've made a bootp solution with FreeBSD a few
ago, before the tech bubble poo-pooed and when I got paid to play ;-)
and, if I remember well, what was it? ... a Redhat network image
server... I forget the package name... Man I hate that! All these were
x86. So I'll start there when finished trying to help here.
> I guess I'm not much help there. You should probably ask the
> various debian mailing-lists if anyone has done a netboot install
> successfully and can help walk you thru the steps. You should also
> check the Apple Tech-info library knowledge-base for anything on
> net-booting Macs. And there's always google and his cousins, as a
> last resort.
Good advice.
> Enjoy!
>
> Rick
Thanks,
Duane
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