Hi again! I found a partial solution to the problem. For the boot-floppy of woody, which has kernel-2.2.20, there exists a perl-script that lets you do what I wanted: set the boot parameters including the name of the root partition. If kernel-2.2.20 is OK for you, this is the way to go (at least to get a working system). The perlscript patch-floppy-img.pl is linked to from http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/ch-init-config.en.html#s8.1. The link is dead, but the script is included in http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2004/03/msg00815.html. Get that script. On another computer: Get the boot-floppies for woody: (.se used in this example since I am in Sweden) http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-powerpc/current/powermac/images-1.44/ Write them to real disks. On unbootable pmac: Boot with boot-floppy-hfs.img Use root.bin as usual The woody installer will run. Mount your root partition (I had to do that manually. If your root partition is ext3 mount it as ext2 and don't forget to edit /target/etc/fstab and set the fs-type to ext2 since kernel-image-2.2.20 does not have ext3 compiled in) Choose "Install kernel and drivers" from the woody installer. It will ask for rescue.bin and the drivers disks. On another computer: Put a good formatted disk in fd0 and run perl patch-floppy-img.pl 'root=/dev/hdaX' boot-floppy-hfs.img > /dev/fd0 Where X is the root partition on unbootable pmac. On unbootable pmac: Insert the disk written to in the last step above. Choose reboot system. This procedure gave me a working, bootable sarge (with kernel-2.2.20). Limitations: 1) you can't (easily) upgrade the kernel. 2) (follows from 1) you can't use ext3 on / Good luck! Something like this would be great to have for more recent kernels. As far as I understand, you "only" need ide-disk compiled in the kernel to get it working (on ide-systems). I have no clue if the diskspace on the boot-floppy is enough for that on 2.4 or 2.6 series. -- Hans Ekbrand (http://sociologi.cjb.net) <hans@sociologi.cjb.net> Never trust a message that appears to come from me but is not signed with GPG! It is most likely SPAM or a VIRUS sent by someone who has my adress and got infected. My public key, ID 7050614E, is available from the HKP key servers and here: http://sociologi.cjb.net/~hans/key.txt
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