Re: Installing on a Dual CPU G5 Powermac?

[shyamal <shyamalprasad@verizon.net>]

    "Sven" == Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
    >> 
    >> I'd be happy to help where I can if something needs testing on
    >> a dual G5.

    Sven> [ ...lots of good advice which is well taken by me... ]

    Sven> Also, once we get ppc64 kernels rolling, it would be nice to
    Sven> get them tested too and so on, do you know how to build a
    Sven> kernel ?

Yes, I can build kernels. However right now I don't have a system on
which I can do this which is really frustrating (my old AMD K7 based
workhorse had a motherboard failure, the dual G5 is the replacement as
a gift from my wife <grin>).

I got a Gentoo image (2.6.9 smp) that boots the G5 nicely. I tried to
use it to get debootstrap or d-i going but I'm not there yet.

Is there a way to use a rescue kernel (in this case the Gentoo kernel
booted from a Mac HD using OpenFirmware) to start the d-i on the Sarge
CD? (My guess is not, but then I'm not very familiar with internals of
d-i).

<babble> 

I even started an attempt to rebuild the Gentoo and/or Debian initrd
on my old i686 machine so I could boot and run d-i or debootstrap on the
G5. Imagine the frustration: the Debian ppcinitrd is big endian, and
my little endian i686 kernel cannot loop mount it!(?). The Gentoo
initrd is ext2, which I can take apart and rebuild on the 686 machine,
but since I can't look into the debian-installer initrd I don't know
what changes I need to make :-) This i686 laptop is too slow and
constrained for me to install a cross compilation toolchain even if I
wanted to.

At any rate, I'm starting to enjoy the powerpc experience. In the five
days since I got this machine I've got a little grip on Yaboot and
OpenFirmware, and I think I see how I might use my wife's G4 (on which
I am *prohibited* from installing Linux :-) to install on the G5 in
target disk mode. 

Tomorrow is another day.....

</babble>

Thanks for all the help!
Shyamal