Installing Debian on a Qube 1
Hi there,
I have an original Cobalt Qube sitting on my desk (model 2700WG, the
one without the serial port). I'd like to use it as a directory server
(LDAP, Kerberos) and possibly as the local telephony server (Asterisk,
ISDN card). I'm struggling to get Debian installed in the first place,
though.
I read the discussion here last month and I'm using CoLo 1.13, but it
still doesn't boot the Linux kernel. I've setup DHCP and NFS with the
sarge "rc1" / "20040801" installer image plus the CoLo binary from
"colo_1.13_mipsel". Here's how far I got:
- Qube displays "Net booting..." and gets IP and parameters from my
DHCP server
- Qube connects to the NFS server and pulls "vmlinux.gz".
- CoLo displays the boot menu. This works fine with 1.13, by the way. I
can scroll up and down and eiter "Select" or "Enter" will make the
choice.
- I select "Network (NFS)".
- The LCD displays "Booting..." and nothing happens.
What stumbles me is that CoLo doesn't seem to load the file
default.colo from the NFS server. If it just tries to run the builtin
boot script, it might hang on the serial console options there.
By the way, with the CoLo version included in the rc1 nfsroot, the
machine hangs displaying "Booting..."/"32,0>32" (or similar, I'm typing
from memory), without displaying the boot menu.
Anyway, Martin mentioned SSH support might be added if there is demand
for it. Count me in. :-) Of course I'm willing to test new builds on my
machine. (I don't have a cross-compiler environment set up yet,
though.)
Another thought I had this morning: Would it be possible for someone to
post a hard disk image (.tar.gz or dd) of a freshly installed Cobalt
machine with the following properties:
- a recent CoLo installed on the boot partition
- serial support in CoLo and the kernel disabled
- a known root password
- eth0 set to DHCP
- SSH enabled
I think I could handle partitioning and formatting the hard disk the
proper way from a PC, then put it into my Qube and boot from disk. Did
I understand correctly that the built-in firmware can load CoLo from a
old-style ext2 filesystem on /dev/hda1?
Note: I'm not subscribed to the list, so please respond by personal
mail, too.
-chrisp
--
chrisp a.k.a. Christoph Pfisterer "To understand a program
cp@chrisp.de - http://chrisp.de you must become both the
PGP key & geek code available machine and the program."
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