Re: PowerPC request for help
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 06:15:01PM -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
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> Hi,
>
> I'm interested in actually contributing to d-i (finally), and I noticed
> that you've put out a request for the PowerPC architecture. As I only
Your help is very welcome ...
> have a single StarMax 3000/160 I probably can't help with the entire
> arch, but I can help with Old World Mac (and clones, obviously, since
> the StarMax is a Motorola mac clone from the period when apple gave
> there blessing to such endeavours). I have a fair level of script and
> C knowledge, but no experience with kernel, or deb/udeb packaging. I
> have been working on boot disks for i386 (from scratch, and I don't
> mean cookbook LFS-type from scratch), so I have a fairly good
> understanding of the linux boot process (though I still have to
> learn mac-specific parts).
I think the most important issue is the miboot thingy. There is hope there
now, namely Piotr has reverse engineereed the apple boot sector, and managed
to recompile miboot with gcc (still using some apple compatibility tool whose
licence needs checking though), and there is at least two more persons
interested in the issue.
What this needs is a good leader, who can do work, but also keeps an oversight
of what is going on and coordinate / push / whatever the other people working
on this project. Ideally this would start with the creation of a miboot alioth
project.
> (In fact I am trying to solve a d-i
> problem for getting floppies with 2.6 kernels, within the d-i way; so
> far I've gotten it to work non-d-i by using the ramdisk_xx kernel
> parameters, but I haven't yet managed to get a small enough initramfs).
>
> I would be best able to help with a more experienced mentor, and
> probably my initial role would be (on Old World PPC Macs & Clones) to
> test the installer regularly (weekly, semiweekly, daily?), tracking
> installation reports, and reproducing, tracing, and (where knowledge
> allows) resolving bugs.
I would gladly help you as best i can.
> I probably am not in a position to do the daily builds, since the
> machine I would be testing the installer on is the only PPC I've got.
This should not be a major problem.
> If you think I could be of assistance, please let me know. I am
> subscribed to the list, but a CC wouldn't hurt.
Cool, ...
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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