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Re: Request proof-reading: installing Debian over LinuxPPC



William Ono <wmono@home.com> writes:

> (I didn't see that the mail I responded to was Cc:'ed to the list.)

whoops -- that was me being tired and not watching my headers... :)

> Yes, that's a good idea, but it's also something I haven't managed to do
> on my own system. :>  (The FBDev server aborts with Signal 11 immediately
> after rejecting two of three modelines.)

There are two things that i had problems with setting up X:

1) In XF86Config my ModeLine lines were UNcommented.  FBDev wants
those lines to be commented out.  If you copy the file from
/usr/doc/xserver-common/examples/XF86Config.eg, I think it has most
everything set up correctly.

2) libnfslock.  If lots of stuff seems to be segfaulting and otherwise 
crashing[1] make sure this library is not installed.  At very least,
edit out the nfslock line /etc/ld.so.preload.  I haven't checked to
see if it has been recently fixed; i also haven't had the time to
track down the problems and file a useful bug report[2].  In
any event, getting rid of it fixed quite a few problems on my systems
(nfs locking, who needs it ;)

3) (This has nothing to do with setting up X, but I just thought of it 
as another problem).  If you happen to be doing the install with a
2.1.XX series kernel, make sure you comment out the spoofprotect line
in /etc/init.d/netbase or it will likely cause a kernel panic when the 
script runs.... Or better yet, use the 2.2 series kernel.

> > 2) installing Debian without having to pre-install LinuxPPC
> 
> I looked into doing this, but I found that the LinuxPPC initrd comes with
> very, very little software.  I couldn't find tar, I found that rm was a
> symlink to /bin/install2, and I saw a whole bunch of other neat hacks to
> minimize the installer :>

Yeah-- it made me scratch my head for a while, but i really didn't
want to download a bunch files I would just be throwing away and was
averse to installing redhat; even if only briefly...

> > If you think #2 would be useful to some people, I'd be glad to write
> > up the full procedure for you to include.
> 
> I would love to include this on the page.

1) When staring at BootX, enter as a kernel argument (with ramdisk
checked): 
                init=/bin/sh

2) Figure out what disk you are going to partition (if you haven't
already partitioned it).  In my case I used /dev/sdb; you'll have to
adjust the mknod arguments[3] according to your HD setup.

3) cd /dev

4) mknod sdb b 8 16

5) pdisk /dev/sdb.  [ Insert pdisk instructions here ]
        For me  /dev/sdb3       /
                /dev/sdb4       swap
                /dev/sdb5       /usr
6) mknod sdb3 b 8 19; mknod sdb5 b 8 21
        Make sure you get the major/minor correct, otherwise you'll
        wipe out other disks or partitions.

8) mke2fs /dev/sdb3; mke2fs /dev/sdb5; mkswap /dev/sdb4

9) we'll also mount our mac partition where base2_1.tar is stored
(make sure the file is not gzipped, as there is no decompression
utility onboard at the moment).
        mknod sda5 b 8 5

9) mkdir /mnt/root; mkdir /mnt/mac

10) mount -t hfs /dev/sda5 /mac

11) mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/root

12) cd /mnt/root

13) this next step assumes that you have your base tarball at the base 
of your mac hardrive in a folder called debian (i.e. that your debian
folder is not on the desktop):

        cat /mnt/mac/linux/base2_1.tar | cpio --extract --make-directories

14) cd into /mnt/root/etc and create all the necessary config files
(e.g. fstab) using: cat > fstab

15) This step is absolutely critical.  If you reboot without
unmounting first, sometimes not all the info has really been written
to disk; you will have done all the above work for nothing!

        cd / ; umount /mnt/mac; umount /mnt/root 

16) reboot the machine (hard or keyboard reset; there is no reboot
command on the ramdisk).

17) this time at bootX, enter init=/bin/sh with ramdisk NOT checked.

18) /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh  (i can't remember if that file exists
yet or not.  if not, then: mount -o remount,rw /  after fsck'ing the
partition).

19) dpkg --configure -a

20) reboot again ( you should have /sbin/reboot now)

21) start up with NO ramdisk and NO init arg (yay-- a real start up!)

22) follow the rest of the docs from here ... 

enjoy!

-aaron

p.s. if someone follows these directions and they lead you astray,
email me for clarification... it's late and i've likely twiddled a few
things the wrong way in my writing.  if you trash your system with
these directions it's not my fault (it was just MacOS anyway, right?)


Footnotes: 
[1] well, this presumes that you followed the directions for the bash
fix! :)

[2] it may have something to do with all the fun bugginess in the new
glibc 2.1?

[3] here is a quickie guide to major/minor numbers for mknod:

        hda             3       0
        hda[1-63]       3       1-63
        hdb             3       64
        hdb[1-63]       3       65-127

        hdc            22       0
        hdc[1-63]      22       1-63
        hdd            22       64
        hdd[1-63]      22       65-127

        sda             8       0
        sda[1-15]       8       1-15
        sdb             8       16
        sdb[1-15]       8       17-31
        sdc             8       32
        sdc[1-15]       8       33-47
        sdd             8       48
        sdd[1-15]       8       49-63


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