Hello, > My questions for this group are: > > (1) Have any of you succeeded for Debian 12.8 on MIPS64el > emulated by QEMU? Yes, without much trouble. > (2) If so, what is your recipe for the installation command? I used qemu-system-mips64el from Ubuntu 20.04: "QEMU emulator version 4.2.1 (Debian 1:4.2-3ubuntu6.30)"
I think I used the following command line (copying from Bash history): qemu-system-mips64el -machine malta -m 1g -cpu 5KEf \ -kernel debian_installer/malta/netboot/vmlinuz-6.1.0-27-5kc-malta \ -initrd debian_installer/malta/netboot/initrd.gz -drive if=none,file=hda.bin,id=hd,format=raw \ -device virtio-blk-pci,drive=hd -nographic -append console=ttyS0 I used a 20GiB large virtual hard drive. The files were from the malta/netboot directory from https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/mips64el/iso-cd/debian-12.8.0-mips64el-netinst.iso There is currently a bug that prevents installation on MIPS processors without an FPU, ( https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1091858 ) but the symptoms are different from what you describe. Also, a machine without an FPU will be much slower, because the kernel will emulate the FPU instructions at much cost. So, using 5KEf is preferable to 5KEc. > (3) If not, did you see the 75%--79% completion, then a hang? > > (4) What is the magic keyboard sequence for switching to > others of the 4 offered views in the installer window? I'm afraid this is impossible when using the -nographic switch, as the connection is over a serial port. You could try skipping "-nographic" and use a virtual graphical desktop. > (5) Is it possible to capture the installer log on the > underlying filesystem, in the hope that is might give > clues about the hang? It is possible to open a shell (by choosing "back", and then "Launch the shell" etc. The installer can be resumed by typing "exit"). The messages could then be forwarded to some storage: mkdir /permanent_log mount /dev/vdx1 /permanent_log tail -f /var/log/syslog > /permanent_log/syslog & or perhaps over a network (using "nc"). > (6) Is there an alternate source of package repositories for > Debian versions before 11? yes: https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive > Thanks in advance for your experience, ideas, insight, and > suggestions. Greetings, Mateusz
