Re: Error Installing from PowerPC CD (was Re: Updated installation images 2019-01-21)
On 1/26/19 3:37 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> 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.
I used the default installation; I did not use expert mode.
>
>> 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/
That didn't work for me (I just tried it on the Lombard).
I also tried "/debian-ports/" as the directory in case a
leading slash is needed. With the leading slash, it didn't
fail as quickly, and appeared to download the first 1 of 1
files, but failed downloading the second 1 of 1 files with:
"The installer failed to access the mirror. This may be a
problem with your network, or with the mirror. You can
choose to retry the download, select a different mirror,
or ignore the problem and continue without all the packages
from this mirror. Downloading a file failed: Retry
Change mirror Ignore"
After selecting Ignore, only "standard system utilities"
was available.
>
> 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.
If GRUB doesn't work yet and Yaboot isn't installed by default
on New World PPC Macs, that may explain why people are trying
to use expert mode. Yaboot seemed to work well enough in
Debian 7.8, though I was using ext3 filesystems, not ext4.
> ...
>> *** 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
Thanks for your efforts in keeping Debian working on old Macs!
-Stan
Reply to: