Ethan Benson wrote: > I have been thinking about the way kernel-images currently handle the > standard bootloader and boot-floppy questions on installation. > > Right now its rather deficient on powerpc as it assumes all PowerPCs > are created equal which is far from the truth: > > it assumes all powerpcs use quik as the bootloader > it assumes all powerpcs have floppy drives > it assumes its possible to create a boot floppy on all powerpcs. > > NewWorld powermacs all lack floppy drives so it would seem logical to > simply default to do_bootfloppy = False if the machine is a NewWorld > powermac. > > however its impossible to really make a very useful bootfloppy on > powermac in general, for oldworld we can copy the .coff kernel to a > floppy which might be manually bootable via OF, but thats about it. i > don't know about other powerpc subarchs. > > the bootloader stuff is what i am not entirely sure should be done > with. yaboot/ybin does not really require anything to be done on > kernel installation assuming /etc/yaboot.conf references the /vmlinux > or /boot/vmlinux symlinks, kernel-image will update those > automatically. the same is true of silo too but kernel-image does do > a little bit with silo at least. > > I would like to hear what people thing the kernel-image packages > should do on non-OldWorld PowerMacs as far as bootloader setup, and > boot-floppy creation. at that point filing a bug against > kernel-package asking for the changes will be done.
APUS has its own, BootX/loadlin-style bootloader which resides on the AmigaOS side completely. I already contacted the kernel-package maintainer about this, asking him about his thoughts on just prompting the user to undertake the necessary steps to boot the new kernel (it currently thinks we use LILO *shudder*), but haven't got any response yet. -- Earthling Michel D�nzer (MrCooper) \ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer CS student, Free Software enthusiast \ XFree86 and DRI project member
