Re: Sarge/beta-3 on a RS6000/7025-F50 (PPC 604e, CHRP)
On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 03:42:27PM -0800, Daniel Narkis wrote:
> Hi Sven,
Ok, copying to debian-boot, since this is most relevant there, and to
rick thomas, which volunteered to help with installation manual. Rick,
this is a boot method on a chrp-rs6k ibm box. I don't know if you are
familiar with these boxes, but just keep this mail until we are ready to
write documentation for it.
Anton, copying you since i was not sure you would read this, and i want
your feedback on the possibility of creating a PReP boot partition.
> Eventually successfull installation of Sarge on the
> F50.
> After few tries I found that auto-boot can be done
> using a PReP partition.
> So I think you can leave the vfat out of the initrd
> and try to put the option of creating PReP partiton.
> Thanks for the help.
Cool. BTW, is there anything particular needed for a PReP partition ? Or
is it just a plain empty partition that can be used for booting ? The
box uses a MBR partition table.
I believe that we may create a PReP-bootloader-installer or something
which would take care of moving the kernel to this partition. Not sure
though how this would work out. A bit like what nobootloader does.
> Now I have to check:
> 1. Install yaboot on sda1. Someone knows if yaboot
> works on this boxes.
It should.
> 2. When I start GDM the screen turns to black and the
> CPU is 99.9% w/ XFree86 process. My card is MGA G200
> PCI. I have no idea why. Maybe V4 is not supporting
> this card ?? Bug in the mga driver? Conf error....
Fill a bug report against GDM/XFree86. Check which process is eating all
CPU with top or a similar command first.
> Procedure for the record for others:
> During the installation select manual partition.
> First!!! create a 4MB unused partition at the begining
> of sda (I understood that this is the size otherwise
> it won't work). After that create your own
So, kernels no bigger than 4MB can be used in this way ? This would be a
problem if we embedd an initrd in those, but there is a size limit
anyway.
> partitioning (mostly it will be the swap and ext3 for
> the /)
> After base installation, reboot
> On the OF prompt
> o > boot cdrom:\vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2
Cool, this will have to go into the installation manual for CHRP.
> NOTE: "cdrom:\vmlinuz" is the
> http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-i/vmlinuz-2.4.25-powerpc-chrp-rs6k.initrd
> burned on a CD ISO9660 format.
> and "root=/dev/sda2" is presumed your / partition that
> you created just before.
Notice that this kernel + builtin initrd will be on the official
debian/Sarge CD (i plan to implement this on sunday), and that those CD
should even be made to be CHRP-bootable.
> When the installation finish and you reboot again.
> At the SMS level:
> Choose the disk you want to boot.
> Go to OF prompt (F8)
> o > printenv boot-device
> Check the output
> o > setenv boot-device <previous output>:1
> BTW: I found that the disk I use has an alias named
> "disk". To check that run
> o > devalias
>
> o > setenv boot-file root=/dev/sda2
> NOTE: root=/dev/sda2 is presumed your / partition that
> you just created.
>
> You still have to boot from the cdrom
> With the new system up; run
> # cfdisk (BE CAREFULL). Change type of sda1 to PReP
> 0x41.
Ok, this would be the relevant info for Anton. Anton, do you think that
it is possible to set the partition type with libparted, i have some
doubts about it, but could be wrong.
> # dd if=/boot/<your vmlinuz> of=/dev/sda1
This would be in the preploader-installer. or however we are going to
call that.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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