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New 2.4.27 powerpc kernel packages ready, please test (including nubus and apus support) ...



Hello all,

After a week or so of work, i finally have the new powerpc 2.4.27 packages
ready and will upload them tomorrow or monday, to be in time for d-i rc3.
They will need NEW processing though, which would be cool if it could be
accelerated, but we will see.

These packages mark a departure from the existing 2.4.27 package in various
ways, which i will describe below : 

  o They are built on the 2.6.x packaging philosophy, so build only the vmlinux
  kernel, and thus need an updated mkvmlinuz to build the .chrp or .prep
  vmlinuz kernels.

  o There is no more -chrp, -chrp-rs6k, -prep or -pmac packages, nor separate
  kernel-modules. There is only one kernel-image per flavour/subarch (5 in
  total).

  o The power3 and power4 flavours have been dropped, those never really
  worked on real hardware, and support is better in 2.6 kernels.

  o The new packages add support for apus (thus replacing the
  kernel-patch-apus packages) and nubus (totally untested though, feedback
  welcome, especially concerning the config file).

Well, i hope that this is all, naturally they are build against the latest
kernel-source-2.4.27, and thus should have all the security fixes in.

That said, i really don't recomend using this kernel on anything, as they are
based to the now almost one year abandoned -benh patch, and for anything real
the 2.6.x kernels are still prefered. The main reason for keeping them around
is that there are no 2.6 kernels for apus or nubus, not really at least, and
that we still face some problem with miboot oldworld floppies with the 2.6
kernels. Some obscure problem even, since it worked 3 times for me at
oldenbourg, but then never again.

So this is also an appeal for : 

  o nubus folk, please test the kernel and help improve it, which will in the
  long run bring debian-installer support to nubus powermacs. Not for rc3
  though, and probably not for sarge, at least not officially.

  o apus folk, please test, and if there are news of the 2.6 apus kernels, i
  will try to add support to 2.6 too.

  o powermac people, please test this, especially on oldworld. And in
  particular i am interested on feedback on upgrades and such.

  o i will add support for this kernel in the coming soon daily-builds of
  debian-installer, and i would love to get feedback from oldworld users and
  the continuing success of floppy-2.4 installations.

The packages are available at (once i finish uploading :) :

  http://people.debian.org/~luther/powerpc/preliminary-2.4.27-3

and should work (this time) both manually with dpkg and through apt-get :

  deb http://people.debian.org/~luther/powerpc/preliminary-2.4.27-3 ./
  
Notice, that this as well as all the 2.6 kernels now in unstable depend on
mkvmlinuz. The mkvmlinuz is a smallish script which should bother no one, and
upto and including version 12 now in unstable/testing had no active script.
The upcoming 13 release of it will have code to ask about using yaboot/quik or
mkvmlinuz at priority medium (default is high, so it will not be chosen) and
default to sane values, and will make the kernel-image postinst call mkvmlinuz
automatically if it was chosen by the user. This should cause no major
problem, and i will soon upload mkvmlinuz version 13, with this change and
support for 2.4.27 kernels too, with Jens approval.

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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