Re: Debian 12 installation on iMac G3

Hi Ed!

Thanks for the hint.
I toasted another CD with the image you suggested.
Launched the installation and everything was working up to the mirror selection stage.
I added one mirror (deb.debian.org) but from the error reported and the looks of the log, it seems that the current contents of the mirror show an inconsistent situation for installing gcc-14.

I clicked back, reconfigured APT for using only the CD and continued.
Then it reached the stage of grub installation. Same issue: it hangs up.

In the console log I can find this:

INFO: task grub-install:17327 blocked for more than 483 seconds.
Not tainted 6.3.0-1-powerpc #1 Debian 6.3.7-1
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disabled this message.
task:grub-install state:D stack:0 pid:17327 ppid:17214 flags:0x00000....
Call Trace:
[f3cf1b30] [00000004] 0x4 (unreliable)
...
(it goes on)

I managed to capture the current versions of the packages, according to /target/var/log/dpkg.log contents:

grub-common:powerpc 2.06-13

grub2-common:powerpc 2.06-13

grub-ieee1275-bin:powerpc 2.06-13

Anything I've missed?

Regards,

El vie, 11 oct 2024 a las 8:08, Ed Robbins (<edd.robbins@googlemail.com>) escribió:

Hi Manuel

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 at 23:50, Manuel Molina Cuberos <mmc@pocosmhz.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all!
>
> I have several PowerPC based computers. One of them is an iMac G3/500 DV SE (powermac2,2) with 1 GB RAM and 30 GB hard drive.
>
> I've had it with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS but it's out of support already. It worked fine from boot perspective, and it was using yaboot.
>
> I wanted to install Debian 12, now that I know that the architecture is being maintained.
> I downloaded and installed it from this image: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2024-02-25/debian-12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso .

Grub right now only works on certain specially prepared CD images. You
need to use this one, it should solve your issue
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2023-06-18/debian-12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso

Best,
Ed

>
> The disk layout for this installation was:
>
> Device / Size / Type / Mount point / Bootable
> -------------------------------------------------------
> /dev/sda13 128MB HFS /boot/grub yes
> /dev/sda14 11GB ext4 / no
> /dev/sda15 512MB swap no
>
> However, when it comes the time to install grub, the system hangs at 16% progress of that stage.
> I opened a console and checked. The process hung was grub-ieee1275
>
> The system log (Alt+F4) showed a dump of a killed process.
>
> I was able to kill that and finish the installation (users etcetera).
> I booted in rescue mode. Then mounted and verified that /boot/grub was r/w.
> Then tried to complete the installation, to no avail. The error message this time:
>
> Installing for powerpc-ieee1275 platform . Errors were encountered while processing grub-ieee1275
>
> Any hint of what I'm missing or doing wrong?
> Any hint will be very much appreciated.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Manuel Molina Cuberos