Re: Installer for power4 and power5 systems
On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 03:19:28PM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
>
> Am 20.12.2004 um 14:37 schrieb Sven Luther:
>
> >On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 02:19:06PM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
> >>
> >>Am 20.12.2004 um 13:59 schrieb Sven Luther:
> >>
> >>>On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 10:49:32AM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
> >>>>Hi!
> >>>>
> >>>>Since I had access for some power4 and power5 System the last time
> >>>>and
> >>>>noticed that
> >>>>the debian installer didn't work on this hardware (a 64bit kernel
> >>>>seems
> >>>>to be needed),
> >>>>I did some integration on this and added a "pseries" target to the
> >>>>debian installer including
> >>>>the 64 bit kernel and a ready to use installer image.
> >>>
> >>>Why won't the 32bit power4 kernels boot on these machines ? They
> >>>should, only
> >>>the iseries really need a 64bit kernel.
> >>
> >>I don't know. The available installation images just crash before
> >>there's anything
> >>reasonable on the screen. Using the .config for a crosscompiled 2.6.9
> >
> >Please provide a serial log output. Could you try also booting the
> >-smp 2.6.8
> >debian kernel ? It may be that things like the sym53c8xx driver are -up
> >broken, i have had reports of this earlier, but i am not sure that it
> >would be
> >what concerns you.
>
> I'm currently not in the office and the notebook connected to the
> serial port
> is down, too. Anyway, the sym53xxx stuff gets loaded by the installer
> as a
> module AFIAK, and it doesn't come that far. It uses the ipr module for
> non virtual
> SCSI, I've submitted a patch for the discover1-data package to fix the
> pci.list
> to get this working.
>
> >>works fine.
> >>Besides this, only a 2.6.9+ makes sense because of the included
> >>virtualization
> >>features. The 2.6.8(.1) did not boot a p670 at all, while the p615 and
> >>new power5
> >>machines did.o
> >Yep, i am working on real 64bit kernels, but saddly lacking time. I
> >just
> >uploaded 32bit biarch gcc compilers from doko to :
> >
> > http://debian-ppc64.alioth.debian.org/biarch/gcc-3.4biarch
> >
> >Mmm, damn, this URL doesn't work, need to fix it :/
>
> I should have known this - I've used the stuff from below ;-)
Well, it is at : http://debian-ppc64.alioth.debian.org/~luther/biarch/gcc-3.4biarch
for now, but please consider participating in the ppc64 project also, much
easier that way. There is also a mailing list, but not really used upto now,
and Martin has expressed that using debian-powerpc for this kind of stuff
(maybe prefixing it [ppc64] in the subject or something) would be more
appropriate.
> >>I probably will if you can point me to some straight forward
> >>documentation. I did
> >>some digging in the partman-* packages some time ago, but in the
> >>limited time I
> >>had, it was not obvious what packages were needed for both issues
> >>(creation of the
> >>prep partition _and_ checking if it is there). If the first is fixed,
> >>I
> >>should take a look at
> >>it again, but hints are really wellcome.
> >
> >You know as much as me. look at the partman-palo as an example, since
> >it does
> >exactly the same thing. partman code is not the most readable of all :/
>
> Ok. I'll retry, but probably not before the beginning of the next year.
No problem. Altough we may miss sarge, but i suppose an unofficial installer
would be just as well.
> >>>>* yaboot may be used to install to the PPC PReP boot partition. Same
> >>>>like above. I didn't
> >>>> find a place where the depencies are set...
> >>>
> >>>This should be fixed, at least i think Colin Watson uploaded a fixed
> >>>version
> >>>of this one lately.
> >>
> >>Since I've a new kernel, there's a new target in the installer
> >>(pseries
> >>besides of
> >>newworld, etc.), and I don't know where to put it that the installer
> >>gets the idea
> >>that calling yaboot may be a good idea. For the latest build I used
> >>the
> >>components
> >>from last wednesday.
> >
> >Bah, once we have official 64bit kernels, this may not be a problem
> >anymore.
> >Care to contribute to this ? I also have limited time, so it will
> >probably
> >happen next year, and on top of that, i don't have the hardware.
>
> I can connect the local p615 directly to the internet and provide a
> login for
> you. It should be able to crosscompile to 64-bit using the packages I
> made at:
Well, for d-i and kernel work, i guess this will probably not be enough. I
have access to leighbb's power3 box, complete with serial console and power
switch, which may be more appropriate. Just the motivation is less if you
don't have direct access to the hardware.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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