Hi PowerPC gurus :-) I'm trying to install Debian Stable (or unstable) on a new IBM RS/6000 B50. But I'm unable to boot any kernel (or the installation system). As I know, the Debian boot-floppies doesn't support this hardware type directly, so I have create my own floppies: 1. downloaded the rescue image, and dd'ed to a floppy (vfat format) [1] 2. downloaded the root image, and dd'ed to a floppy (ext2?) [1] 3. replace the kernel image in the rescue floppy with a kernel image, which should boot on a rs/6000 [2] (google was my friend here). mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt; cp linux.bin /mnt; umount /mnt I'm able to boot the kernel with the following kernel arguments from the Openfirmware prompt: > boot floppy:,\linux.bin root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 video=ofonly the kernel boots fine, and detect all internet disks, the matrix card, and a floppy drive (fd0). After two or tree seconds the kernel stops, and display the message, that I should insert the next floppy disk (root floppy). And here, the problems starts: I replace the disk and hit enter. But the kernel *doesn't* try to access the floppy drive (or the cdrom-drive), it simply dies with the following (well known message :-( ): Cannot open root device "fd0" or 02:00 Rebooting in 180 seconds.... The RS/6000 status display is now: 7777 (very bad) :-( I'm pretty sure, the kernel supports floppy drives, because a fd0 device is detected during startup. I have also playied with various other kernel arguments: prompt_ramdisk=1, root=/dev/mem, root=/dev/mem0, ramdisk_size=8192, chrpboot no different, except for the kernel dies immediately if I use /dev/mem* as root device. I haven't found a kernel image, which supports network boot, on the net, so I haven't tested this method yet. I have no further ideas now. Any ideas? Thanks for your help, Thorsten p.s. btw kernel images from d-i are not tested [1] http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-powerpc/current/chrp/images-1.44/ [2] http://www.kutilek.de/technik/debian-rs6k -- Thorsten Sauter <t.sauter@viastore.de>
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