On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 09:24:08PM +0000, Deinsti Suski wrote:
> Recently me and a friend of mine have been trying to install Debian Sid on
> an IBM pSeries 550 server to no avail; we have attempted a variety of
> methods such as installing GRUB with everything on an / ext4 partition,
> GRUB with a separate ext2 /boot and ext4 /, Yaboot with everything on an
> ext4 / and Yaboot with a ext2 /boot and ext4 / - however none of them work;
>
> For GRUB, it just freezes at 'Welcome to GRUB!' with no disk activity and
> it never continues no matter the partition setup while for Yaboot, it
> always fails at
> "can't get <device_type> for device: <NULL>
> <NULL>:-1,ls: Unable to open file, Invalid device"
>
> we tried altering yaboot.conf by swapping out uuid's with /dev/sda2 among
> other things but no matter what it's always the same error
>
> The hardware is an IBM pSeries 550 Server
> Processors: 4x IBM POWER6 cards with 2-Cores at 4GHz each (Total: 8 Cores)
> RAM: 92GB
> HDD: Single 300GB drive (No RAID)
>
> Do you have any suggestions on how to get this system to boot?
I haven't done an install in quite a few years but I have a few question:
Are you using dos partition table (MBR style)?
How large is the PREP boot partition? Is it set as bootable?
I seem to recall an 8MB prep boot partition is pretty standard and should
be plenty for grub.
Are you running on bare metal or is there a hypervisor involved?
Does the installer boot fine and only the system after installation
won't boot?
What media are you booting the installer from?
Which installer image are you using?
--
Len Sorensen