Hello everyone Not exactly a Debian-powerpc question but I could not locate a mailing list that inspired the same sort of confidence "over there". So, I hope I get a few words of wisdom just before the "...you should have looked harder, here is XYZ mailing list" bit.
I am trying to install the Ubuntu server edition on an iMac G3 power pc (192MB of RAM, 400MHz CPU). All I need is a very basic text based linux system on that machine. Here is what is going on: The installation starts alright, scans for hardware and then starts downloading packages from the CDROM. Towards the end of this process it fails with something like "apt-cdrom-install could not be located for an unknown reason, installation is aborted". :( Here is what I have tried: 1) Checked the CD's integrity (pass) 2) (as per the Debian powerpc installation instructions) dmesg reports that the CDROM is found and it is indeed mounted correctly. While the CDROM is mounted I can see the contents in /cdrom. Specifically the package that seems to be failing is in /pool/a/apt/apt-cdrom-install-[something something].udeb 3) I tried to check the DMA settings but could not because the CDROM is not mounted under some /dev/hda but rather /dev/sg and its structure is therefore different. 4) No show stopping errors seem to be reported in dmesg. 5) Have reset the PRAM. 6) If it is of any help, after the installation is aborted and the computer is supposed to go into a reset it goes into some sort of a loop where the screen flashes in some sort of wave pattern filling from top to bottom. The system is still usable during this because I can switch to another console and do a restart from there.I have also tried killing the process that i think fails but without any success. Here is what I would like to ask: a) I suspect that maybe the installation script has been transposed to the powerpc version but the name of the package has not been adapted properly just because of an oversight maybe and given that there are probably not a lot of people tinkering with G3 era iMacs out there :) this bug has not yet surfaced. If this is indeed a case of a misspelled package, how would I go about correcting it? b) If it is not a misspelled package, do you guys have any idea what might be stopping the installation at that point and how I could correct it? c) Any other ideas? For example, are there any kernel parameters that could help during installation? Looking forward to hearing from you AA
