RE: the trials and tribulations of getting woody on my powercenter 120
well, here's an update to my problem, I've found the solution, so I'm
going to send it out here, in the hopes that someone may stumble across
it in the future.
first of all, here's a link to the page with the answer on it, however
it's not where I saw the answer, as I overlooked it...
http://www.mfdh.ca/~mfdh/apple/#oldworld_potato
note that his installation instructions work perfectly for woody.
here's the page where I actually noticed what I had missed:
http://www.imaclinux.net/gh.php?single=81 this page is also very
useful, however, for a first time install, I would go w the first one,
as it's a bit more n00b friendly.
what I missed was that there is a leading space in the boot-file
variable. I don't know why it would cause the boot to work once, and
then not again, but putting it in solved my problem. I now have the
powercenter sitting with only the power cable and the ethernet cable
plugged into it, no monitor, no keyboard and no mouse. I'm happy.
for reference, here are the open firmware settings that worked for me:
boot-device "scsi/sd@0:0"
boot-file " scsi/sd@0:3/boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-powerpc"
boot-command "begin ['] boot catch 1000 ms cr again"
according to the second link, I could have made the settings more
generic, as long as I copied my kernel over to /vmlinux, but as I'm new
to linux, I didn't want to do anything too fancy. I know that if I
change my kernel, I'll have to modify the boot-file variable to match.
and now you know that too :)
again, if anyone wants more of the info I found, just let me know, I'd
be happy to compile it into a how-to or something.
I hope that this helps someone.
take care,
--wylie
oh, and as far as getting that IDE drive recognized, the new kernel saw
the PCI card, so all I had to do was partition it, format it and mount
it :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Wylie Graham Rothstein [mailto:wylie@tektite.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 03:45 PM
To: debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org
Subject: the trials and tribulations of getting woody on my powercenter
120
I've been working on getting woody installed on an old powercenter 120.
My goal is for it to be a stand alone ftp server, running only debian,
with no macos, no monitor, no kybd or mouse. (I'm going to be
co-locating it once I have everything running properly, so I need it to
be able to boot up unattended)
I've done a ton of research, and thanks to the help of many web pages,
got debian installed.
(if there is any interest in it, I can list the most useful sites I hit,
as the documentation for the install is a little light when it comes to
problem child old-world machines like this one.)
I've almost got the machine booting properly, but it's just not quite
there.
I haven't got the appropriate cabling, so I can't get a terminal session
to open firmware, and as this particular machine has a buggy OF
implementation (big surprise, right...) I can't use my monitor to view
the OF environment at boot. I've been using the boot/root disk combo to
get the installer running, then I execute a shell, and from ash, I can
enter commands through nvsetenv to make the changes I want to OF.
here's what I have it set to, where it will actually boot:
boot-device "/bandit/gc/53c94/sd@0:3"
boot-file "/bandit/gc/53c94/sd@0:3/boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-powerpc"
boot-command "boot linux"
after entering these parameters into OF, I reboot. the machine chimes,
then chimes again, then, after a brief pause, the monitor comes up, and
I'm into the os.
after logging into debian, I run nvsetenv to double check the settings,
and everything is how I left it. the only problem is that if I tell the
system to reboot, it fails to do so. it just sits there with a blank
monitor, and even if I wait a while, I can't ping it, so I know it
hasn't booted.
at this point, I have to zap the pram to get it to boot from a floppy,
go back into the installer, drop to ash, reset the variables in OF and
then I tell the installer to reboot the system. it chimes twice, and
then I'm in linux again.
I'm using quik as a bootloader, and my quik.conf is properly configured,
and I've upgraded the kernel to 2.4.18-powerpc from 2.2.20 as I would
like to have the system see the promise ata 100 card I installed along
with a 60gb hd. getting those to show up is another problem, but it's
one I haven't researched yet; if you happen to know how to get linux to
see a pci card, and get the drive mounted, feel free to let me know, but
I'm going to do the legwork first before I actually come begging for
help :)
any help/advice to solving this problem would be greatly appreciated.
thank you
--wylie
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