Re: Debian CD-images
"EB" == Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net> writes:
EB> the debian cds should boot Newworld powermacs and PReP
EB> (maybe) it would be nice to be able to boot oldworld macs
EB> too but that would require non-free Apple CD drivers or a
EB> custom written driver that acts as a boot loader
EB> [...]
EB> i frankly doubt its even possible to make a bootable CD
EB> that will boot all of the powerpc machines. there is just
EB> too much diversity and broken firmwares.. fortunatly most
EB> of them have floppy drives and the ones that don't (*cough*
EB> apple) are Cd bootable. apple machines are probably the
EB> most common powerpc machines anyway...
I'm sure we've had some discussion about this issue before, but
just to bring it up again, what are the LinuxPPC people using on
their CD-ROMs? My housemat and I downloaded disk images for
LinuxPPC 2000 and burnt CD-ROMs from them, and they booted my
``old world'' PowerComputing clone just fine. (We actually
downloaded them because there was no working Debian solution at
the time, and I needed to be sure I could recover if something
went drastically wrong after updating my C libraries.)
>From reading their hardware-compatibility list
(<http://www.linuxppc.com/about/hardware/>), it looks like
LinuxPPC 2000 is only installable* on Macs and Mac clones -- their
CD-ROMs boot on pretty much all of those systems, including G4s,
G3s, iMacs, iBooks, various PowerBooks, lots of older systems, and
lots of clones.**
If LinuxPPC can boot both ``old world'' and ``new world''
PowerMacs with the same CD-ROMs, why can't Debian? I thought I
remembered seeing a message from someone at LinuxPPC offering to
help with getting the bootable CD-ROMs set up, as well, although
I'm damned if I can find it now (gotta love computers, right?).
As for other architectures, LinuxPPC seems to have decided that
booting on PowerMacs is the most sensible option, and provides
links to various places (mostly off their site) for more
information on getting LinuxPPC installed and running on those
platforms. Debian could certainly do that, too; another option
might be to provide additional CD-ROM images that would boot on
different architectures. From my admittedly brief look at the way
Debian does CD-ROM images, it seems like it might be possible to
provide a skeleton image for each architecture that would be
filled in with the architecture-specific and generalized PowerPC
packages.
Let me know if I'm totally off-base here. While it would be nice
to have a single set of disks for all PowerPC systems, I think we
all agree that's not entirely possible, and maybe not even
entirely desirable. It seems like the major downside to having
multiple architecture-specific CD-ROMs would affect retailers more
than end-users, and I suspect that most Debian users download
images and burn their own CD-ROMs anyway.
CMC
* ``Installable'' is their term; I don't know whether that means
that LinuxPPC 2000 doesn't work on other architectures or whether
they just mean you can't boot from their CD-ROMs on other
architectures.
** Aside: LinuxPPC's Mac page,
<http://www.linuxppc.com/about/hardware/apple/>, claims that G4s
should be able to boot with the newest version of BootX available
from Ben's site, <http://ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/>. I thought
that was kind of interesting given the discussions here about
BootX vs. yaboot. I don't see anything on Ben's page that
confirms or denies G4 bootability with BootX.
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C.M. Connelly c@eskimo.com SHC, DS
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