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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