help installing on powerbook6,8 w/ dead cd drive
Greetings,
I have tried and failed to install Debian on my powerbook. Please review
my procedure and suggest revisions.
SPECIFICATIONS
powerbook6,8 - 1.5 GHz PowerPC 12"
Mac OS 10.4
Dead SuperDrive
No USB Boot (Open Firmware doesn't recognize external disks)
Internal 150GB drive formatted with Disk Utility years ago into 2 drives
-- 1 UFS, 1 case-sensitive HFS+. Disk Utility also created an 8MB
Apple_Boot partition for each of these partitions, for a total of 4
partitions.
Open Firmware only recognizes Apple_Boot partitions. Presumably it does
not see my HFS+ partition because it is case-sensitive.
I cannot rewrite the disk partition map because I cannot run off-disk (no
CD drive, no bootable external drive).
Debian distro: debian-500-powerpc-businesscard-1.iso, downloaded from
http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/
SITUATION
The downloaded yaboot assumes the rest of the files are on the same
partition. Open Firmware only sees Apple_Boot partitions, which are too
small to hold vmlinux AND initrd.gz. Modifying yaboot.conf/yaboot requires
ybin, which requires a running Debian, which I don't have.
Manually loading the kernel should work:
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/yaboot-howto/ch9.en.html#s9.3 I
should be able use root=/dev/hda5 (case-sensitive HFS+ partition).
PROCEDURE
MAC OS X
Double-click Debian ISO to mount it.
In Terminal, mount first Apple_Boot partition and copy vmlinux to it: %
mkdir /Volumes/apple_boot
% mount -t hfs /dev/disk1s2 /Volumes/apple_boot
% cp -a /Volumes/Debian:PowerPC_lenny/install/powerpc/vmlinux
/Volumes/apple_boot/
% cp -aR /Volumes/Debian:PowerPC_lenny/install /
Reboot into Open Firmware (cmd-opt-o-f)
0 > boot hd:2,\vmlinux root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/install/powerpc/initrd.gz
initrdsize=10240 append="--"
Loading ELF
Claim failed.
This happens whether I put initrd.gz on HFS+ or on 2nd Apple_Boot.
I also looked into netbooting, but documentation is inconsistent and I
could not find netbootable binaries.
QUESTIONS
Is /dev/hda5 right for root=?
Is HFS+ drive being case-sensitive the reason Open Firmware, vmlinux or
both cannot see it?
Even if I could boot the kernel, would the installer be able to use the
UFS partition?
Am I using the wrong distro?
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Here's to dipping into Debian!
Ross
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