Bug#382129: Is now a good time to revisit installer not booting on OldWorld PowerMac beige G3?

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Sat, Sep 16, 2006 at 03:35:17PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> 
> On Sep 16, 2006, at 3:05 PM, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
> >On Sat, Sep 16, 2006 at 09:50:03AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> >>On Saturday 16 September 2006 09:09, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >>>Is there someone out there who will work with me to get a kernel  
> >>>that
> >>>boots to run debian-installer on my beige G3 PowerMac (OldWorld)
> >>>machine?
> >>
> >>I'd like to see that happen.
> >>
> >>>If not, I think it may be time to withdraw OldWorld PowerMacs from
> >>>the list of hardware supported by the Debian Installer.
> >>
> >>Note that as I understand there are also problems booting the kernel
> >>outside the installer (i.e. just upgrading an installed system), this
> >>does not seem to be a Debian Installer issue, but rather a powerpc  
> >>kernel
> >>or kernel configuration issue.
> >
> >Its actually a problem with the ramdisk generators and/or  
> >bootloaders, not the
> >kernel proper.
> 
> Actually, from the symptoms I'm seeing, it may not be getting far  
> enough to encounter ramdisk problems. (Not to say there are no such  
> ramdisk problems, just that what I'm seeing is not diagnostic for  
> them.)  I gave fairly detailed notes in the previous bug report,  
> Bug#382129.  Let me know if you want more information.
> 
> If Sven is right, that leaves bootloaders.

Are you using quik or bootx ? 

This patch :

  http://kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=6cdd2bdfb9e2449f1c8a0f729cdf9cfd733dd63f

  [POWERPC] Fix BootX booting with an initrd

  The bootx_init.c trampoline didn't properly add the ramdisk to the
  "reserve map" (list of reserved areas of memory), thus causing all sorts
  of failures when using BootX with an initrd. Also fixes a possible
  problem if the ramdisk is located before the device-tree passed by
  BootX.

Might be of interest to solve this problem, which is why i suggested trying
the latest 2.6.18-rc kernel before. Please try and provide feedback.

Friendly,

Sven Luther