Hello,
boot-floppies 2.3.5 have just been uploaded to unstable.
We need people to test this build as its really the first build of
woody boot-floppies that claims to work on powerpc.
First there is a common misconception that if you don't have a floppy
drive you can't help, test, or use boot-floppies. This is *NOT TRUE*
boot-floppies is a historical name which refers to the current debian
installation system, what is called boot-floppies is in fact used on
the CDs as well as the images you download and boot directly from the
hard disk manually. You do *NOT* need a floppy drive to help test
these.
Also note that this is EXPERIMENTAL, UNTESTED, UNTRIED, BUGGY
software, there are bugs, its not perfect, you should not yet depend
on these for installing debian. That said we need semi experienced
users to test this out, you need to be familier with debian's first
stage installation process and how to boot your system.
I am not going to answer questions about how to boot your system with
these, or general how to install debian questions. if you don't know
these things your probably not ready to test this yet.
i will answer one FAQ even experienced users are asking: Where is the
Base tarball?
Answer: there isn't one, its gone, obsolete. we now install the base
system from real .debs using a new utility called `debootstrap' (not
to be confused with dbootstrap). This means that you MUST install
either via the network, or via a CDROM. you cannot install the base
from floppies or a crippled filesystem (HFS, MSDOS etc). an ext2
partition containing a debian woody/sid mirror will do however.
Additionally it has two notable and long needed changes:
Make System Bootable now works on NewWorld PowerMacs. At the moment i
am the only one who has tested this, i want to see more testing.
However this will only work when yaboot 1.2.1-1.2.1-1 is installed
into the base, right now that version of yaboot is only in sid, not
yet in woody, this means if you install a woody base Make System
Bootable will fail. The updated yaboot package looks to be on
schedule for entry to woody this Thursday, i may try and get it forced
in sooner for the benifit of boot-floppies.
Make System Bootable is now not quite so bogus on OldWorld PowerMacs,
the quik installation routine has been completely rewritten:
- the /target/quik.conf now uses the path to the actual kernel
image instead of the /vmlinux symlink since quik doesn't seem to work
with symlinks.
- the OpenFirmware boot-device and boot-command variables are now
set. boot-device is set to essentially: $(ofpath /dev/[sh]da)0.
meaning the root disk, partition 0. boot-command is set to the often
cited hack to deal with disks not spinning up fast enough. this
should make a 7200, 7300, and 7600 bootable at a minimum. This needs
to be tested and any further information or changes that we can safely
do to OpenFirmware would be welcome. However, we CANNOT include
Apple's nvramrc patches, they are non-free, sorry.
- there is now a confirmation dialog explaining that OldWorld Macs
suck and in all liklyhood this won't actually work and how to reset
the nvram so the boot floppy will work again.
In the end we are just going to have to live with a very high failure
rate on oldworlds as far as bootability goes <bsd-hacker> buy better
hardare </bsd-hacker>
the NewWorld Make Bootable however i expect and insist on a 100%
success rate, I want to hear about any failures NOW and not after
woody ships where were stuck with it for 2 and half years.
Persuant to ensuring 100% success for yaboot setup the installer now
has several checks to ensure that you partition your disk correctly,
you *MUST* have an 800K Apple_Bootstrap partition on the same disk as
the root partition for Make System Bootable to work. the installer
informs you of this requirement when you select `Partition a disk' and
it will prompt you to repartition your disk again as soon as the
partitioner exits if dbootstrap does not detect an 800K
Apple_Bootstrap partition. When you mount the root partition this
check is done again to ensure that there is an 800K Apple_Bootstrap
partition on the same disk as root, if not you are told to
repartition. (you can ignore all of these warnings, but Make System
Bootable WILL fail if you do, you will be on your own to make debian
boot). I would hope these checks can be tested, ive tested most
situations i can think of and it seems to work. The idea is to make
this impervious to the RTFM impaired.
I added a new command to mac-fdisk: `b' this command asks you for the
start block and then creates an 800K Apple_Bootstrap partition
starting at that block. This command does not prompt for size, name,
or partition type. Creating a bootstrap partition can't be much
simpler then that. you still are responsible for ensuring it appears
before any macos partitions, unfortunatly automatically reordering the map
does not seem to be trivial. Also the long known bug where the `i'
command created bogus partition tables unless you calculated the disk
size yourself is now fixed. `i' can be used without problems now.
for yaboot /boot partitions are allowed, but only on PowerMacs, not
CHRP hardware.
I am not sure if the CHRP yaboot setup works or not, it should but i
don't have any of that hardware. the requirments and behavior is the
same as a newworld powermac except dbootstrap checks for type 0x41
bootstrap partitions instead of mac style Apple_Bootstrap.
now enough blabbering, Go forth and test, report success/problems here
or better at debian-boot, filing bugs tends to be counterproductive,
so please use the mailing list instead. thanks.
--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
Attachment:
pgpO0aym8FFdZ.pgp
Description: PGP signature