Re: on kernel building, firewire support, my install HowTo
"Tho' I don't quite understand what you mean with "graphical boot
loader": If I'm not mistaken I can delete all my Mac partitions
(except the very first one, which is called Apple_partition_map, which
will be re-written if I initialise my hard disk for Linux) and still
be able to boot into Apple's Open Firmware. I just tested it. When the
machine boots I hold down
<Apple-Key> - Alt - O - F"
Okay first of all what some ppc users call apple's bootloader is
graphical selector that allow you to choose what drive to boot up by
selecting a icon that represents various bootable drives (ones that it
recognises). Yes it does recognise ext3. See:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75296
Technically it is calld, "Startup Manager screen".
And the HT procedure I mentioned early I see is detailed at (it also
makes use of this "apple boot loader"):
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=114112
About being able to compile a kernel with only a few years of user
experience on redhat, as I've also had a few years experience. I will
tell you that one of my kernel failures was due to, as I was told latter
on irc assistance, that I had built HFS+ support as a module. According
the 'trend' then, this would result in an unusable kernel. I believe
there were a few other issues involved too where one was allowed to
build things as modules when they should have been built as in the
kernel. My point is that building things as modules when they will
break the kernel should not even be an option. As a pc user you would
not be faced with these same particular issues, "Should I build HFS+
support? Should I not?". In all fairness, HFS+ was experimental at the
time.
I never said I thought it should be easy to build kernels, I think that
there could be more info on ppc specific issues. Certainly, disallowing
the user to make modules rather than build into kernel should be a
priority. I've also read extensively on how to migrate to 2.6 kernels
and ppc info is rarely mentioned. Have you read the articles/essays
called "Migrating to Linux Kernel" by William Von Hagen? There is a lot
of info there, an excessive amount (extremely thorough). After finishing
up the articles (and other pc centric essays), I still went off and
messed up my kernel. So it's not as if I never did any research, nor is
it that I am mentally challenged (although I could be and you just don't
know it).
"The docs you can find for compiling kernels should be valid for both
x86 and ppc. The differences between both architectures are mainly the
different configuration options for the respective kernels. Or that's
at least what I learned so far."
Apparently not if my kernels were non-functional because of ppc specific
issues.
Also
Not to negate the helpfulness but have you read
http://seb.france.free.fr/linux/ibookG4/iBookG4-howto-4.html
sepcifically, "Disk write-protected; use the -n option to do a read-only
check of the device.
fsck failed. Please repair manually and reboot.".
Doesn't sound too good does it.
"It's important to meticulously edit the
kernel config. People sometimes publish their kernel configs on WWW,
which can really be helpful for editing my own one:"
Yes I have seen configs used with iMac 400mhz, but only for 2.4 kernels.
I never come accross 2.6 configs for my machine. I could very well be
wrong, but for some reason I think machine specificity is important.
But thanks for the links.
"You're right. But what conclusions should this knowledge lead me to?
Avoid Debian? Possibly, yes."
No this is not what I'm saying. Your response should not take the form
of a defence of debian as I still use 'debian'. Self critique is
healthy. You need not turn this into an apologetic defence.
But I don't see another distro currently
I'd be willing to use: The sometimes perhaps lousy, sometimes perhaps
even missing Debian docs simply made me write my own ones, as soon as
I think I understood something worth to be published on my web site
..."
Yes I have been getting around to that putting my own site up. I have
some HowTos I want to publish. But I think the problem with sites, is
that they are regularly not updated, and critiqued. Learning to install
debian was a bit of a pain the ass because there are all these
autonomous sites all over the net, some better than others that don't
don't seem to show up on google searches . I then had to figure what
had been depricated, learn what which procedure from X would work with
procedure Y, and why. Honestly I like the wiki concept that could be
kept up to date at a central location, such as the main debian site.
And no, links to various install HowTos from the deiban site are not
desirable because of some of the problems spoken above.
About that thread on 2.4, I'm not interested in 2.4 as my system was
slow on woody. I really don't know if this really was due to the kernel
or not, but sarge with its 2.6 kernel makes my system fly. As I said
before, I currently am using ubuntu-ppc hacked up with debian parts due
to circumvent problems both have. I mainly went to ubuntu because I
needed a working scanner without having to hack for hours on getting it
working. I don't think anyone really knows the new scanner arch. I've
found some fixes but school right now will not allow me to backup,
reinstall and then much around for who knows how long before I get my
scanner to work.
ooff, I'm pooped. I missed breakfast.
Ciao
PS Apparenty the graphical bootloader is not really a boot loader but a OF hack to version 3 OF.
Maybe some of the mac partitions are not necessary for this to work but I've been told this by
the opendarwin people.
http://lists.penguinppc.org/yaboot-devel/2002/yaboot-devel-200210/msg00032.html
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