It works! (Was Re: Problem installing debian on G3 beige)

[Manea Mirko <mami@arena.sci.univr.it>]

Hi!

thanks to the help of Ethan I succeeded in creating a boot floppy.

The steps are the following:

1. get boot-floppy-hfs.img and dd it to a floppy;
2. test if you can boot (it will prompt for a ramdisk). I had to use an
old boot-floppy-hfs.img (with kernel 2.2.17) because latest (with
2.2.18pre21, I think) locks the keyboard;
3. get boot-floppies sources (from http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/boot-floppies.html) and untar it;
4. cd to boot-floppies-2.2.17/powerpc-specials/miBoot;
5. with a hex editor (like khexedit or beav) edit System.bin;
6. near the end (~00012d00) you'll find:
   root=0200 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1 adb_buttons=100,111 video=atyfb:vmode:14,cmode:16,mclk:63
   where root=XXYY, ie XX major and YY minor number of the device to mount
   as root (/dev/sda2 -> root=0802, /dev/sda3 -> root=0803, look in /dev/);
7. set load_ramdisk=0 and prompt_ramdisk=0;
8. insert boot-floppy-hfs.img and do a hmount /dev/fd0;
9. hcopy System.bin :
10. humount;

Now you've got a boot floppy which mounts your root filesytem :) 
For me it works!

I've just finished installing the base system, but when the installer
asked for type of package selection (simple or advanced) I selected simple
and then it did a reboot (clean shutdown). Maybe there is some problems
in the installer... but now debian boots and I'm going to use dselect
and apt..

Thanks to everybody,
	Mirko

On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 12:37:00AM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 10:23:40AM +0100, Manea Mirko wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 12:03:10AM -0900, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 09:43:09AM +0100, Manea Mirko wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Do you know if I can use it to mount my root partition (/dev/sda3) instead
> > > > of a ramdisk?
> > > 
> > > yes you should be able to, however i don't know if miboot supports any
> > > kind of interaction, i don't believe it does.  so you have to do one
> > > of two things:
> > > 
> > > make sure you compile the kernel with the correct embedded default
> > > root device, this will happen automatically if you compile on the
> > > target system, the Makefile will embedd the current root device into
> > > the kernel (rdev is missing on powerpc for some reason)
> > > 
> > > edit miboot.bin to hand the correct root= argument to the kernel, you
> > > may have to do this already as it might have a initrd arguments.  you
> > > must do this with a hexeditor, its not as bad as it sounds, you just
> > > need to find the spot where the kernel arguments are and change them.
> > > (i know freaky, miboot is not what you would call a general purpose
> > > bootloader) 
> > > 
> > 
> > sorry, but did you mean System.bin ? I cannot find miboot.bin in the 
> > boot-floppies-2.2.17 sources.
> 
> ah yes, sorry.  
> 
> -- 
> Ethan Benson
> http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/



-- 
Best Regards,
      Mirko Manea <mami@mami.net>
      URL: http://www.mami.net