Re: Booting/ installing Debian on a G3 with Open Firmware 2.4
On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 12:32:56AM -0700, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:41:36 -0700, Jason Self wrote:
> > The beige G3 is also able to boot from CD. Insert CD and hold down "C"
> > on the keyboard while the machine powers up, searches for startup
> > devices, finds the CD and then begins to boot it. You can then release
> > the "C" key. If you have a working CD drive, that might be simpler?
> >
> > Check out http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
>
> I'm sorry, but you are both wrong. Such machines are neither netbootable
> nor CD-bootable, except for specially mastered non-free CDs which Debian
> does not provide. You MUST use a floppy, unless you pull the HD and image
> it on another machine.
Technically, the machine supports booting from network or CD, but Debian
does not support doing either on oldworld hardware. It is possible with
a little effort to package up the installer into an XCOFF image and
netboot it, but I don't remember the details. If you like, take a
look at the hack-coff program in the arch/powerpc/boot directory in
the kernel tree and the Makefile in that same directory for how to
package up a kernel and initrd into a format the machine might accept.
The CD part is a tougher question, and has been discussed before.
Brad Boyer
flar@allandria.com
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