Re: Making d-i work on oldworlds
On Oct 15 2003, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> Rogério Brito schrieb:
> >What I did was to compile my own kernel, gzip the vmlinux file in the
> >root directory of the kernel sources (calling it with the appropriate
> >name), grab the hfs boot image from woody and replace the kernel from
> >the floppy.
>
> Did this work with a kernel 2.4?
Exactly. It was needed for seeing the second PCI bus of the oldworld,
where the video card (an imstt card) currently sits. Otherwise, life
with X was much harder.
> Do you know which options you need for running the kernel on an
> oldworld (minimal .config would be nice to have).
I don't remeber exactly what I did, but I didn't make anything special
(or, at least, I don't think so). I am currently installing woody on
such powermac to see what are the exact options. I will report back with
the .config file that I used.
Oh, one thing to have in mind: the kernel tree that I used was always
Ben's tree. I rarely use kernels from Debian proper.
> Do you think it would be possible to make a minimal kernel (everything
> not needed for booting into an initrd in modules) that works on
> newworlds and oldworlds and fits on a floppy (compressed) at the same
> time? Or should we simply forget that and build a seperate kernel for
> oldworlds with another configuration?
I don't know, but that would be a nice goal. I'll have to check.
> >I don't understand exactly what would be needed here. Which work
> >exactly needs to be done? Wouldn't the part that handles newworlds
> >work correctly, besides having to call quik instead of yabootconf (or
> >is that mkofboot) to set up the bootloader on the disk?
> >
> >Would there be other code that needs to be written?
>
> You could try to use yaboot-installer as a starting point or even make
> it possible to install yaboot and quick with the same installer
> component. Probably it's not too much code, but it needs to be done and
> tested.
>
> As I don't know quik, I don't know if it's simply a matter of calling
> quik instead of mkofboot.
I think that it should be an easy task, since quik just installs (in
theory) a boot block and it loads the kernel. Let's see what happens. I
just have to find some free time to read the code and see how I could
help.
The worst problem that I had (and my main reason to using a boot floppy
approach instead of using quik) was that whenever the kernel I compiled
had some problems, I ended with a dead system, as I couldn't pass
parameters to quik at boot time or switch to another kernel (since I
couldn't see Open Firmware).
Nasty, huh? :-(
I made a log of some of my experiences trying to get this thing working
at <http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/diary/2001.html>.
Hope this helps, Roger...
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Rogério Brito - rbrito@ime.usp.br - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito
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