Re: Desperately need some help installing Debian 2.2 on a PowerBook G3

[Randy Adamczyk <randy@24on.cc>]

> I started by reformatting my 12 GB drive allocating half of it to 
> MacOS 9 formatted HFS+, a CD sized partition formatted HFS, and the 
> remainder to Linux with root, swap, /home, and /usr partitions (all 
> of this was done through Apple's latest Disk Tools utility).
>
> I then copied the entire contents of the Binaries Disk 1 CD onto the 
> HFS partition because I can't have both the CD and a floppy drive at 
> the same time (they are in the same bay and hot swappable).
>
> I've been able to boot both through floppies I created from disk 
> images found on the CD, and through BootX.  Both launch me into the 
> Linux installer where I have formatted the Linux partitions, mounted 
> them, and mounted the HFS partition.
>
> Then I come to my problem.  I'm at the point where it's time to 
> install the operating system kernel and modules.  I'm given a choice 
> of a number of different ways to do it.  I've tried off of a mounted 
> volume (the HFS partition) and the CD - both with exactly the same 
> results:
>
> I'm asked to choose the path where the Debian archive resides.  I 
> have no idea which archive it's asking for, but when I leave the 
> default choice of /instmnt and select "OK" I get an error message 
> stating that this path doesn't contain the directory 
> /powermac/images-1.44/rescue.bin.  So I assume that I'm looking for 
> rescue.bin.  (By the way, that file is in 
> "dists/potato/main/disks-powerpc/2.2.16-2000-07-26/powermac/images-1.44/")
>
> So I specify the path to that file (which I've verified under MacOS 
> by actually going there).  However, when I tell it to "Continue" in 
> the Linux installer, the cursor jumps to the end of the line where 
> I'm supposed to input the path.  I've tried specifying the path 
> element by element, both with and without the "/" at the end of each 
> element, and get exactly the same results.

hi chris,

have you tried to specify the _whole_ path (including the 
drive/partition)? since you copied the cd to an HFS partition, maybe 
your path needs to start with something like this (assuming that your 
HFS partition is hda4 - you can find out using the pdisk utitilty for 
the mac): /dev/hda4/......

you could also try to make a RAM disk unter mac os, and start up from 
the RAM disk, so you don't need your floppy drive and you can use the 
cds.

randy