On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 05:43:39PM +0100, Simon Vallet wrote: > Hi, > > I'm currently trying to try debian-installer on an OldWorld -- as I got > it, the CD won't be bootable, and no floppy images are available.
Jeremie Koenig did some work on old world pmac, i don't know if he got to finalize it. The best place to ask would be on the debian-boot mailing list. I am CCing Jeremie and the debian-boot mailing list now. Jeremie, could you make a quick resume of the status of it, and how far you did go ? Also, it would be nice to finalize this stuff in the next week, so that the debian-installer beta3 would support oldworld (and chrp and chrp-rs6k and G5 ibm boxes and pmacs and power3 boxes :). There seems to be a relative lack of powerpc people working on d-i lately, altough there was a strong team before the beta2 release, most of them seem to be busy with other parts of debian-installer and/or other stuff. > I found some vmlinux+initrd.gz downloads, but I don't know what to do > with it ? I tried booting the provided vmlinux with quik, specifying > initrd=<path_to_initrd.gz> on the command-line : it boots fine, but all > I get is my normal prompt. I suspect this is because I also specified > root=<current_root_device>, but I had no idea which other root device I > could use... Well, the way to go with oldworld is to use miboot with the -powerpc-small kernel, and a floppy target for building the initrd. Jeremie was working on it, but i don't think it got commited, not sure though. I think the problematic thing is to get the initrd down to floppy size. I will be working on building d-i initrd images for power3 and power4/G5, as well as finalizing the vmlinuz+initrd stuff this next week, but it would be great if someone with oldworld pmac knowledge and interest assist me in getting the floppy target working too and commited, so the daily built powerpc images include them. > Is there an oldworld-specific debian-installer howto somewhere, > or am I missing something obvious (do I need specific packages > installed (for an installer ???), or won't it work with quik anyway, > or...) It won't work with quik, it will be either .coff booting from the serial console, miboot and the floppy target, or bootx fro mac os <10. Look at the debian-boot mailing list archive for details of what happened already, especially on threads involving Jeremie. > I'd really like to test this, so any suggestion is greatly appreciated. > Thanks Before testing, there is still a bit of work to do, but you are welcome to help. Friendly, Sven Luther
