Help needed for Debian AmigaOne support
Hi,
I'm asking for help to add support for the AmigaOne (desktop PPC) to Debian GNU/Linux. Currently AmigaOne users have to install a Debian Woody base system, before they can upgrade to/install sarge or etch (also there is no other GNU/Linux distribution available for the A1 ATM and therefore A1 users are pushing me to create a Debian install CD ;) ).
I took a look at the Debian installer and the kernel build package (make-kpkg) and found some C-code/scripts/makefiles/etc. that would have to be modified, as the AmigaOne is identified as an 68k Amiga/APUS system (which is totally wrong). Also support for U-boot (A1 firmware) images would have to be added to make-kpkg. A special bootloader package should not be necessary, since U-boot supports PReP boot partitions and AmigaOS4 comes with a second level bootloader with ext3 support.
A problem may be the Linux kernel for the A1. Currently only kernel versions up to 2.6.16.x are working on the A1 (more or less due to the ppc to powerpc architecture change in the Linux kernel), but I'm planning to start on AmigaOne support for the powerpc architecture as soon as kernel 2.6.22 is out. The A1 platform code is not in the official Linux kernel tree - I hope this is not a criterion for its inclusion in Debian (albeit it makes things harder).
I would be grateful, if somebody could help me with the modifications on the debian-installer and the make-kpkg package, as I have no experience with building debian (installer) packages and CD images.
Regards,
Gerhard
A1 Linux kernel project: http://amigaone-linux.sourceforge.net
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