success story and RFC: boot debian powerpc from external firewire hd without messing with initrd image
I succesfully booted debian on my v.2 powerbook
titanium from an
external firewire disk (a maxtor one touch), without
having to mess
with an initrd kernel.
The procedure uses the etch beta installer (sarge
installer didn't recognize the firewire disk) and is
described in (excessive?) detail at my under
construction site
http://www.boborosso.com
In brief: kernel must be >= 2.6.12 to recognize the
rootdelay option configured with disable the RAM disk
support
option (found in Device Drivers -> Block devices).
Configuration options that must be compiled-in, that
is enabled but NOT
marked as modules:
* Device Drivers -> SCSI Device support:
o SCSI device support
o SCSI disk support
o SCSI generic support
o Powermac external and internal SCSI
support (among SCSI low
level drivers)
* Device Drivers ->IEEE1394 (Firewire) support:
o Raw IEEE1394 I/O support
o OHCI-1394 support
o SBP-2 support
and, maybe unnecessarily,
o OUI Database
o Build in extra config
o IP-1394 Entry
* File Systems: the support for the filesystem
that is going to be
used on the firewire drive, (i use XFS), must be
compiled-in. Others can
be kept as modules.
The resulting kernel will not use initrd, so do not
use the --initrd
option when issuing the make-kpkg command.
The installer will fail when trying to install yaboot.
yaboot.conf must be updated manually (ie with ybin in
a chroot) and must
be like this:
boot=/dev/sda7
ofboot=/pci@f4000000/firewire@e/node@0010b9210040ad70/sbp-2@c000/disk@0:7
device=/pci@f4000000/firewire@e/node@0010b9210040ad70/sbp-2@c000/disk@0:3
partition=3
delay=15
timeout=100
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot
image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux
read-only
root=8:3
append="rootdelay=12"
the ofboot and device path is found with
# echo /proc/device-tree/pci*/firewire*/node*/sbp-2*
the root argument is shown in a ls -l of the root
filesystem partitions,
ie:
# ls -l /dev/sdXXX or
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part3
brw------- 1 root root 8, 3 Jan 1 1970 /dev/scsi/...
8,3 are the numbers.
If you have time, let me know if it seems useful or
correct or working. TIA.
In particular, mkvmlinuz being called during the
installation of the
kernel package makes me wonder if one can do without a
boot partition.
___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it
Reply to: