Re: Error Installing from PowerPC CD (was Re: Updated installation images 2019-01-21)
On 1/26/19 4:40 AM, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
> So, here are my results today attempting to install Debian 10/sid:
>
>
> *** 1) Lombard (New World) ***
>
> As expected, the CD booted. The CD drive was detected, and
> everything seemed to be working. The base system installed,
> except for this:
>
> "No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources.
> You may try to continue without a kernel, and manually install
> your own kernel later. This is only recommended for experts,
> otherwise you will likely end up with a machine that doesn't
> boot. Continue without installing a kernel?"
I don't know how exactly you proceeded with the installation, but
this shouldn't happen. Did you - by any chance - choose expert
mode?
If not, this should be a matter of rebuilding the CD image. Normally
the problem arises when the package lists were out of sync when
building the CD image.
> Next, while "Configuring apt", I picked the defaults for a
> mirror: United States, deb.debian.org -- this failed. So I
> went back and tried ftp.us.debian.org, which also failed. I
> then tried entering the information manually: "deb.debian.org"
> with the archive mirror directory "/debian-ports/", which also
> failed. So I must not be using the correct mirror/directory.
The correct mirror is: http://ftp.ports.debian.org
Directory is: debian-ports/
Debian Ports uses different mirrors, you cannot use the standard
mirrors that you are using when installing a normal Debian release.
A lot of users are falling into this trap and there is a patch
to address this issue, but I have not been given permission
yet to merge the patch [1, 2]
> Ignoring the above error, the only software available for
> installation was "standard system utilities". So I selected
> that. Next error was "[!!] Install the GRUB boot loader on a
> hard disk. Unable to install GRUB in dummy Executing 'grub-
> install dummy' failed. This is a fatal error." I selected
> "Continue" then "Continue without boot loader". I'm not sure
> why it didn't try to install yaboot instead of grub, but I
> have a working AppleBoot partition from Debian 7.8 that should
> still work.
Yes, that's known because getting GRUB to install with debian-installer
on a PowerPC Mac is very difficult to implement. If you have a IBM
PPC machine, it will work smoothly.
If it wasn't for PPC Macs, I would have already removed Yaboot
from Debian altogether.
> System then rebooted; I booted into my backup partition and
> copied a 4.19.9 kernel and modules to /boot and /lib/modules.
> Trying to boot this kernel also failed, so I give up for now.
Again, normal installation should work. I will soon have time to
test on my iBook G4 again where the installation worked without
any issues last time I tried.
> Note: Since /lib is a symbolic link to /usr/lib, the default
> installation seems to require that everything be installed in "/";
> i.e. no separate "/usr" (if /usr isn't mounted, then executables
> such as /bin/dash and /bin/bash fail looking for a shared library).
Odd, I thought the usrmerge transition in Debian was stopped.
> *** 2) Wallstreet (Old World) ***
>
> As expected, the CD didn't boot, but BootX in Mac OS booted
> the vmlinux and initrd.gz from the powerpc directory on the
> CD, and the installation proceeded normally.
My last information was that OldWorld Macs are currently not
supported at all. I have a PowerBook 3400c which I can use for
testing but I am currently moving apartments, so I am unable to
unpack things and test.
> Probably if the installation selected an appropriate kernel and
> if the mirror selection worked, the installation would succeed.
Mirror selection works when you use the proper mirror and the
kernel installation should also work. But again, I don't know
what you did. A lot of people try the expert installation which
doesn't work properly at the moment.
Generally, you should just use the default setting for most things
and not try to use the full features you normally can use in
debian-installer. Simply we couldn't test all configurations and
code paths.
I have recently pushed some changes to debian-installer to address
the installation problems in expert mode, but I will have to
rebuild debian-installer first before the updated images are
ready.
> Also, the installation of yaboot needs to work for New World
> systems, and installation of GRUB should not be attempted.
Yaboot is going to be kicked out soon, it's horribly broken
and unmaintained upstream for years. It doesn't support modern
ext4 features. We will be going the GRUB path, we just need to
work on the GRUB integration in debian-installer.
We need more people helping with the development.
Thanks,
Adrian
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=879130
> [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=918428
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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