Re: yaboot installation media
Hello Ben!
On 3/25/22 01:00, Ben Westover wrote:
> I haven't been able to get any GRUB installation media to work on my PowerMac G4.
> I've tried Debian, Gentoo, and Arch Linux, and every time it doesn't recognize
> GRUB at all. Even attempting to boot manually from Open Firmware just hangs.
> In all situations where I've tried, this issue has been solved with yaboot.
GRUB is known to work very well on PowerMac G4 and in my experience, it is extremely
unlikely that you happen to one that single G4 Mac that does not work with GRUB.
What is more likely is that you have bad memory modules in your machines and Yaboot
just happens to use different memory regions which is why it's not affected by the
problem.
I would suggest running a memory tester to check your RAM's health or replace all
modules with known good ones. Also, make sure that the machine has reasonable
amounts of memory.
> I tried to create some yaboot install media, but I've seen that it would require
> patching debian-installer and I'm not sure where to start with that. If anyone
> could help in this process of creating install media that uses yaboot instead of
> GRUB, it would help me out tremendously.
You can either use the last stable installation images for PowerPC:
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/7.11.0/powerpc/iso-cd/
and then upgrade from Wheezy to unstable but that's not going to be easy.
Or, you can use one of the older ISO images for PowerPC which were still
based on Yaboot:
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/9.0/powerpc/iso-cd/
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/10.0/powerpc/iso-cd/
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/ (anything before May 2019 should be Yaboot)
If you use these older images, you will run into problems with the signing
key at the installation step "Select and install software", so just skip this
and install the system offline.
Once the system has booted, you should download the latest Debian Ports
keyring package and install it with dpkg:
# wget http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/pool/main/d/debian-ports-archive-keyring/debian-ports-archive-keyring_2022.02.15_all.deb
# dpkg -i debian-ports-archive-keyring_2022.02.15_all.deb
then run:
# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade
Reverting the installer system back to Yaboot is not an option for us since
that would bring much more problems than it would solve. In particular, Yaboot
is no longer maintained upstream, does not work with modern filesystems and
does not allow debian-cd and debian-installer code to be shared with other
architectures as can be done with GRUB.
But first, you should really check your memory modules and upgrade your memory
if necessary.
Adrian
--
.''`. 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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