Re: Installer for power4 and power5 systems
Am 20.12.2004 um 14:37 schrieb Sven Luther:
On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 02:19:06PM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
Am 20.12.2004 um 13:59 schrieb Sven Luther:
On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 10:49:32AM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
Hi!
Since I had access for some power4 and power5 System the last time
and
noticed that
the debian installer didn't work on this hardware (a 64bit kernel
seems
to be needed),
I did some integration on this and added a "pseries" target to the
debian installer including
the 64 bit kernel and a ready to use installer image.
Why won't the 32bit power4 kernels boot on these machines ? They
should, only
the iseries really need a 64bit kernel.
I don't know. The available installation images just crash before
there's anything
reasonable on the screen. Using the .config for a crosscompiled 2.6.9
Please provide a serial log output. Could you try also booting the
-smp 2.6.8
debian kernel ? It may be that things like the sym53c8xx driver are -up
broken, i have had reports of this earlier, but i am not sure that it
would be
what concerns you.
I'm currently not in the office and the notebook connected to the
serial port
is down, too. Anyway, the sym53xxx stuff gets loaded by the installer
as a
module AFIAK, and it doesn't come that far. It uses the ipr module for
non virtual
SCSI, I've submitted a patch for the discover1-data package to fix the
pci.list
to get this working.
works fine.
Besides this, only a 2.6.9+ makes sense because of the included
virtualization
features. The 2.6.8(.1) did not boot a p670 at all, while the p615 and
new power5
machines did.o
Yep, i am working on real 64bit kernels, but saddly lacking time. I
just
uploaded 32bit biarch gcc compilers from doko to :
http://debian-ppc64.alioth.debian.org/biarch/gcc-3.4biarch
Mmm, damn, this URL doesn't work, need to fix it :/
I should have known this - I've used the stuff from below ;-)
Sure, these power machines are not that common hardware for joe
user,
but after
IBM started the openpower initiative its good for debian to support
these machines, too. I
personally like to contribute this stuff, so that other people can
use
it, too.
Anyway the installer is not perfect yet. Perhaps someone on the list
can give some quick
hints in order to save lot of time for me:
* The partitioner needs to support (pseudo or whatever) the creation
of
a PPC PReP boot
partition, or just check for its existence, since it is needed for
booting. Where to set the
dependencies? What packages to create and/or modify?
Fixed in latest parted uploads. partman-prep needs to be written, you
are
welcome to do this.
I probably will if you can point me to some straight forward
documentation. I did
some digging in the partman-* packages some time ago, but in the
limited time I
had, it was not obvious what packages were needed for both issues
(creation of the
prep partition _and_ checking if it is there). If the first is fixed,
I
should take a look at
it again, but hints are really wellcome.
You know as much as me. look at the partman-palo as an example, since
it does
exactly the same thing. partman code is not the most readable of all :/
Ok. I'll retry, but probably not before the beginning of the next year.
* yaboot may be used to install to the PPC PReP boot partition. Same
like above. I didn't
find a place where the depencies are set...
This should be fixed, at least i think Colin Watson uploaded a fixed
version
of this one lately.
Since I've a new kernel, there's a new target in the installer
(pseries
besides of
newworld, etc.), and I don't know where to put it that the installer
gets the idea
that calling yaboot may be a good idea. For the latest build I used
the
components
from last wednesday.
Bah, once we have official 64bit kernels, this may not be a problem
anymore.
Care to contribute to this ? I also have limited time, so it will
probably
happen next year, and on top of that, i don't have the hardware.
I can connect the local p615 directly to the internet and provide a
login for
you. It should be able to crosscompile to 64-bit using the packages I
made at:
http://debian.gonicus.de/debian-powerpc/
but you may want to use your packages ;-). The installer has been built
on this
machine, so the sources are present.
Cheers,
Cajus
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