Re: debian-installer on oldworld -- how-to ?
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 05:43:39PM +0100, Simon Vallet wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently trying to try debian-installer on an OldWorld -- as I got
> it, the CD won't be bootable, and no floppy images are available.
Jeremie Koenig did some work on old world pmac, i don't know if he got
to finalize it. The best place to ask would be on the debian-boot
mailing list. I am CCing Jeremie and the debian-boot mailing list now.
Jeremie, could you make a quick resume of the status of it, and how far
you did go ?
Also, it would be nice to finalize this stuff in the next week, so that
the debian-installer beta3 would support oldworld (and chrp and
chrp-rs6k and G5 ibm boxes and pmacs and power3 boxes :). There seems to
be a relative lack of powerpc people working on d-i lately, altough
there was a strong team before the beta2 release, most of them seem to
be busy with other parts of debian-installer and/or other stuff.
> I found some vmlinux+initrd.gz downloads, but I don't know what to do
> with it ? I tried booting the provided vmlinux with quik, specifying
> initrd=<path_to_initrd.gz> on the command-line : it boots fine, but all
> I get is my normal prompt. I suspect this is because I also specified
> root=<current_root_device>, but I had no idea which other root device I
> could use...
Well, the way to go with oldworld is to use miboot with the
-powerpc-small kernel, and a floppy target for building the initrd.
Jeremie was working on it, but i don't think it got commited, not sure
though. I think the problematic thing is to get the initrd down to
floppy size.
I will be working on building d-i initrd images for power3 and
power4/G5, as well as finalizing the vmlinuz+initrd stuff this next
week, but it would be great if someone with oldworld pmac knowledge and
interest assist me in getting the floppy target working too and
commited, so the daily built powerpc images include them.
> Is there an oldworld-specific debian-installer howto somewhere,
> or am I missing something obvious (do I need specific packages
> installed (for an installer ???), or won't it work with quik anyway,
> or...)
It won't work with quik, it will be either .coff booting from the serial
console, miboot and the floppy target, or bootx fro mac os <10.
Look at the debian-boot mailing list archive for details of what
happened already, especially on threads involving Jeremie.
> I'd really like to test this, so any suggestion is greatly appreciated.
> Thanks
Before testing, there is still a bit of work to do, but you are welcome
to help.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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