Re: Boot Floppies PPC Old World Mac
On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 4:08 AM, Hans Ekbrand
<hans.ekbrand@sociology.gu.se> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 01:14:59PM -0400, Scott MacCallum wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I am trying to get the latest stable release of Debian PPC installed
> > on an old world Mac. I have been following the Debian GNU/Linux
> > Installation Guide
> > (http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/index.html.en) and in
> > it there is mention of a boot-floppy-hfs.img file
> > (http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/ch05s01.html.en#id2536590)
> > which is the first of many boot floppies that need to be dd'ed. The
> > problem is I have been unable to locate the file
> > (http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-powerpc/current//images/powerpc/floppy/)
> > in question and the other ones have proven not to work.
> >
> > Could someone point me in the right direction?
>
> Disclaimer: I haven't installed to oldworld macs since 2006 so my
> knowledge in this area may well be outdated.
>
> The installation floppies (miboot) use non-free software and is not
> included in the official debian distribution. However, in ealier
> versions of debian, the miboot floppies were included. I don't know
> exactly when (was it after woody?), but the non-free part of the
> floppies where removed the official distro and the boot-floppies could
> not boot.
>
> Nevertheless, individual debian developers (Sven Luther and others)
> contiued to made automatically built installation floppy images
> available to the general public.
>
> Some of the miboot history is in recorded in
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=382129
>
> As far as I recall, there where problems to get kernels later than
> 2.6.15 to boot (and the the correct root device) on oldworld.
>
> And the daily miboot builds were non automatically tested, so the
> often failed (e.g. the image for the root-floppy was too big to fit a
> physical floppy disk).
>
> When I tested new kernel versions on oldworld macs with the quik
> boot-loader, I had to rescue or even reinstall from floppies. I
> learned to like the woody installation floppies, the worked well on
> the hardware I had (Performa 5400). After installing woody I could
> upgrade to sarge without problems, but be careful with kernel versions
> newer than 2.6.15! (I had success running self-compiled kernels newer
> than 2.6.15 but only with kernels that did not use an initrd!).
>
> I would try the woody boot-floppies.
>
> http://archive.debian.org/dists/Debian-3.0/main/disks-powerpc/3.0.23-2002-05-21/powermac/images-1.44/
>
> Install woody -> upgrade to sarge -> compile a custom kernel that does
> not use an initrd using recent kernel sources -> upgrade to etch.
>
> But, as I said in the beginning, my knowledge may well be outdated.
> Perhaps others on this list have more recent experiences of installing
> (and running) oldworld macs.
>
> --
> Hans Ekbrand (http://sociologi.cjb.net) <hans@sociologi.cjb.net>
> A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion
> Q. Why is top posting bad?
>
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>
Hans,
Thank you very much for the information! I am sure this will save me
considerable time and frustration. The computer I am trying to get
Debian installed on is a PPC 5400/200
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/stats/powermac_5400_200.html).
I am still getting use to the file layout Debian uses. Where can I
find the Woody ISO for download. Would the small one fit my needs or
do you recommend one of the others?
--
Sincerely,
Scott
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