Re: d-i fails on new PowerMac G5
"Pedro" == Pedro Sanchez <psanchez@nortel.com> writes:
Pedro> Almost right. "tell it to boot off the second disk..." I
Pedro> imagine that's what I do when I click the Linux icon in the
Pedro> graphical boot menu, correct? I assume the little text boot
Pedro> menu that follows is actually coming from yaboot.
Hi Pedro,
That is correct. That is the first stage loader. You choose the "OS"
to boot at this prompt ('x' for macosx, 'l' for Linux etc.). If you
choose 'l' you should get a boot prompt from the "second stage". Do
you get this? Does it go by really quickly, or are you sure you are
going straight back to the graphical boot?
Pedro> The problem is, that after I press "l" the machine doesn't boot
Pedro> Linux, instead, it sends me back to the graphical boot
Pedro> menu. I haven't found a way to get out of this loop. Note
Pedro> that pressing "x" in the text menu *does* boot OSX without
Pedro> problems. I wonder then why is it that "l" doesn't boot
Pedro> Linux.
It might be that the installer got messed up generating the
yaboot.conf file and then installing yaboot. Can you post the
/etc/yaboot.conf file from the installed system? Of course you need to
boot into Linux for this!
If you cannot boot into Linux at all, you can actually boot using the
installer, use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get an alternate terminal and mount the
root disk (d-i will probably name the disks /dev/discs/disc0/part[n]
and so on).
Also, try the hints at
http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/yaboot/doc/yaboot-howto.shtml/ch9.en.shtml#s9.3
You should be able to boot this system one way or the other. At worst
pop in the d-i CD, and at the boot prompt try to boot the installed
kernel on /dev/sdb3.
Finally, if you can get the yaboot.conf file and fix it (assuming
there is something obviously wrong) it is possible to reinstall yaboot
(using a chroot for example, we can show you how) as long as you can
boot Linux from *something* (like the d-i CD :-).
Pedro> Hmm, I'm just thinking, would swapping the hard drives
Pedro> work? What if the Linux disk is now sda and the OSX disk is
Pedro> sdb? I guess I can give it a try.
It probably will. However, if you have the time to debug this issue
and file bug reports (I'm assuming there is a bug) it would really
help out the Debian installer. I don't think I've seen anyone report
on this two disk G5 system.
Cheers!
Shyamal
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