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Re: Call for Debian Installer testing, before D-I Beta1 release



On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 01:29:33PM -0600, Stephen R Marenka wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 04:27:56AM -0800, Brad Boyer wrote:
> > I did download and try to boot the m68k build of this installer. The
> 
> Which initrd? cdrom and hd-media want a cd image. nativehd will download
> everything from the net.

I'm actually not sure at this point. They all have the same file name
on the server, and I didn't change the name.

> > system in question is a Macintosh Quadra 840AV (64M RAM, 1G SCSI drive).
> > The mac flavor kernel boots with no issues and sees the major hardware
> > (internal video, keyboard/mouse, internal SCSI, internal ethernet) and
> > the installer does start in low-memory mode. I haven't downloaded anything
> > but the basic installer, so I haven't been able to actually complete
> > the install.
> > 
> > The CD-ROM method looks like it could work if the SCSI CD-ROM module
> > was available. It looks like only IDE CD-ROM drives are supported. The
> 
> Interesting, I believe the scsi cdrom used to be builtin. If that's not
> the case, then I need to add those modules onto the initrd.

It didn't show up in the driver list in /sys, so I presume it wasn't
loaded. The SCSI controller detected the CD-ROM drive and it showed
up in /proc/scsi/scsi, but no /dev/sr0 or any equivalent. I did find
the IDE CD-ROM driver in the appropriate directory in /sys, but this
system only has SCSI.

> > odd thing is that there doesn't appear to be a network only install.
> 
> nativehd

OK. I'll make sure to download that one and try it. Would it be
inappropriate to suggest that this is a somewhat unintuitive choice?

> > Still, it does look like we're not in as bad of shape as we thought.
> > I'm just curious how much RAM I would need to avoid the low-memory
> > mode, and if there's anything I'm missing because of that. It's not
> > like we could do a graphical install on m68k. We can barely get X
> > running after the install.
> 
> It looks like lowmem level1 kicks in at 64Mb and level2 at 32Mb. I
> haven't pushed any of those numbers in quite a long time, so we can
> likely get by with less than that.

That makes sense, I guess. I don't think I have any m68k systems with
more than 64M of RAM total. The Q840AV could have 128M, but I haven't
filled it up completely. Some of my older systems only have 16M. Is
there an easy way to force it into a particular mode for testing?

	Brad Boyer
	flar@allandria.com


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