Re: Problems installing Debian Sarge on PReP PPC, (Motorola PReP Utah PowerStack II Pro4000)
On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 03:52:41PM +0200, C.Glose@gmx.net wrote:
> Hi,
>
> hope that this is the correct list...
> I have many difficulties on installing Debian/Sarge on my system because
> there is something fishy with the installer. I'm using Debian Sarge stable
> with the current installer.
> Maybe someone could help me a litte bit?
> I'm net-booting with tftp and the installer runs quite well through the
> installation process. But: The automatic partitioning does not work.
> It does not create any boot-partition needed for the openfirmware.
> Second: When i manually create the partitions and define the essentially
> "PowerPC PReP Boot-Partition" the installer just creates an ext3-partition
> (as parted reports). I think, that the partition typ should be 41 ("PReP
> Boot-Partition")
Indeed, i have a powerstack myself, and this wass kind of fishy, there is code
in the installer to make it work, but as partman is nothing more than a huge
ununderstandable mess, i was not able to fix it.
The easy way to fix it is to move to console 2, start parted, and create the
prep partition there, then after the nobootloader dialog, you have to go to
console 2 again, and dd /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-powerpc to your prep partition.
and reboot.
Sorry for this, i tried to get this working, and there is even a basic
prep-installer in the subversion repository, but i couldn't get
partman/partman-prep to behave, and the installer was frozen before i could
get something about this.
> It is possible in the installer to choose other file-system-types like
> PowerPC PReP Boot-Partition, prep, PowerPC, PReP, but they seem to be
> all identical.
Yes, known bug.
> Third the installer is not able to install a boot-loader (there is
> an error-message about this). I'm not sure, but i think for that type
> of machine, no boot-loader (can) exists. The Kernel is just copied in that
> Prep-Partition and the openfirmware loads it... The installer does not
> do this.
See above, you should be presented with the nobootloader message, which is
*NOT* an error message, but a feature, which gives you hint on how to do it
yourself.
> I then started to create a partition table manually. In the BusyBox
> environment, i only find parted as a partitioning tool. And it seems to
> me that parted is not able to create a prep partition.
Sure it is, you create a partition and add the prep flag :
set <partno> prep on
> On first glimpse the installer did all the stuff
> correctly except all things related to make the system boot-able.
>
> Does anyone know how i can make the machine bootable?
> I can't find some program like fstab, which could be able to create a
> prep-partition.
Hope this helps, sorry for the month or so of delay, june was a overbusy month
for me.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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