On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 02:15:20AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: > Hardware: > > PowerMac 6500/225 with 128MB of RAM and a 6GB SCSI disk > partitioned as 2.5GB for MacOS, 3.0 GB for Linux root (an > "all-in-one" filesystem) and 500 MB for Linux swap. It also has a > SCSI CD-RW drive and a floppy drive. > > Software: MacOS 9.1 with Roxio "Toast" for the CD-RW drive. > > > > Following the call for testers in Debian Weekly News - January > 20th, 2004, I decided to give it a try. > > The Beta2 d-i for PowerPC doesn't support OldWorld PowerMacs, but > armed with my trusty copy of BootX, I figured I could do anything > yaboot could do. Amazingly, I succeeded in getting it to boot and > run the installer! (Some problems remain, but I'm sure they can > be solved...)
Cool. > Here's what I did. > > I downloaded a recent 40 MB install CD image from > > http://people.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/powerpc/beta2/sarge-powerpc-businesscard.iso > and burned it to a CD. > > I copied the "root.bin" initial ramdisk file from the CD's > /install/powermac directory into my MacOS System Folder. > I did the same for the "vmlinux" file, putting it in the "Linux > Kernels" folder in the System Folder. > > I activated BootX and told it to boot the new kernel and use the > new initial ramdisk. After some experimentation (in which I > discovered a lot of option combinations that *didn't* work!) I > gave it the kernel argument "devfs=mount", and left all options > for video modes *un*set. > > It booted Linux and gave me a 640x480 console running the d-i > beta2 installer. > > I answered the questions it asked about locale and keyboard type, > and it started installing. > > It asked for a hostname and tried to do some DHCP magic to figure > out what my network looked like. I said to myself, "this is not > going to work." because my very minimal DHCP server is setup to > help my laser printer configure itself, and nothing else. All > other machines have static network configurations. But it does > seems to have worked at least partially, because it was able to > retrieve and install a bunch of software. > > I'm currently stuck almost at the end of the install, because it > insists on trying to install yaboot. This is impossible on an > OldWorld Mac. I may have to do a loopback mount of the ISO so I > can do a little surgery on the install scripts to allow me to > gracefully bail out of the yaboot install when I burn the next CD. This will be solved in the next d-i uploads. I have uploaded yesterday a nobootloader package, which enable you to work without any bootloader, but ultimately, a quik-installer would be needed. Maybe Jeremie is already working on that ? Also, this means that it is possible to boot with bootx on oldworld, and that the default -powerpc-small that was selected in kernel-installer is probably not the right solution. A "kernel to use" kind of question might be welcome, and maybe there could also be some kind of auto-probing for which kernel was booted. BTW, these kind of things have more their place on the debian-boot mailing list, so i forward this there. Friendly, Sven Luther
