Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
On Mon, 11 May 1998, Nathan E Norman wrote: On Mon, 11 May 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote: : On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Nathan E Norman wrote: : I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian : boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. : Boot floppies are very customizable. The problem is with init on the boot disk, not the kernel. Can't you doctor the boot disk to use the serial port instead of tty1? Are the sparc bootdisks that different from all the others? -Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
Nathan E Norman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. Now I've got this Netra Linux box :) I don't know sun at all, but how about modifying the bootdisks to spawn a getty and the installprog on ttyS? I tried to take a look at disks-sparc/root.bin, but (after gunzipping it) I wasn't able to mount it - Are they somehow special? So I refer to i386's root.bin. Indeed I never used anything else than i386, but maybe the basic Idea applies. root.bin doesn't contain a getty and it's init is the installation-prog. So you need to rename init to something else, copy a real init and getty to the disks, make an inittab. Probably this won't fit on the original image, so you need to make a bigger one. # pwd /var/tmp # zcat /pub/debian/hamm/main/disks-i386/current/root.bin root.img # ls -l root.img /sbin/init /sbin/getty -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root12468 Jan 24 22:48 /sbin/getty* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root24188 Apr 15 17:09 /sbin/init* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2662400 May 12 11:47 root.img # set newsize=$[ ( 2662400 + 24188 + 12468 ) / 512 +1 ] # mount root.img /oldroot -oloop # dd if=/dev/zero of=newroot.img count=$newsize # mkfs.blah newroot.img # mount newroot.img /newroot -oloop # cd /oldroot; find -depth | cpio -pmd /newroot # cd /newroot/sbin; mv init install_prog # cd /sbin; cp init getty /newroot/sbin # vi /newroot/etc/inittab and add a line like T1:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty -m -l /sbin/install_prog -L ttyS1 9600 vt100 # umount /newroot [insert an install disk in fd0] # mount /dev/fd0 /floppy # cp /var/tmp/newroot.bin /floppy/root.bin # umount /floppy This is completely untested (I hate to reboot) and as mentioned above I have no clue regarding sun. Please let me know if this works or if it is nonsense. Rainer -- KeyID=58341901 fingerprint=A5 57 04 B3 69 88 A1 FB 78 1D B5 64 E0 BF 72 EB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Nathan E Norman wrote: I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. Now I've got this Netra Linux box :) Is there any reason why you can't just take the kernel from the RedHat boot floppy and put it on the Debian boot floppy? Or even build a custom kernel from your RedHat install and put that on the debian floppy. Boot floppies are very customizable. 7~he 7~hought /|ssassin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
On Mon, 11 May 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote: : On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Nathan E Norman wrote: : I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian : boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. : Now I've got this Netra Linux box :) : Is there any reason why you can't just take the kernel from the RedHat : boot floppy and put it on the Debian boot floppy? : Or even build a custom kernel from your RedHat install and put that on the : debian floppy. : Boot floppies are very customizable. The problem is with init on the boot disk, not the kernel. -- Nathan Norman MidcoNet - 410 South Phillips Avenue - Sioux Falls, SD 57104 mailto://[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.midco.net finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP Key: (0xA33B86E9) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
On Wed, Apr 29, 1998 at 02:37:00PM -0500, Nathan E Norman wrote: Now for the hashed over part. Is there a sane and reasonable way to either convert an existing RedHat machine to Debian, or to start the Debian install from what I have now? Remember, I can't use the Debian boot disk. (I thought someone had a URL for this) I did this once (but don't tell anyone because I wasn't supposed to do that). What I did was take dpkg's package and extract its contents using ar (.deb's are an ar file). I then extracted the tar file (there are two tars in there, data.tar.gz and control.tar.gz) on /. This gave me a dpkg to begin with. I proceded to satisfy dpkg's dependencies (libc, libstdc++, ncurses) by repeating the same procedure with the requiered files. Please note this is VERY dangerous because you are overwriting the libc (I did this with an RH 5 installation) and many programs may break due to some sloppyness in RH. To get dpkg working you have to touch some files (I cann't tell this by heart) in /var/lib/dpkg. You also have to copy the control files for the packages just installed. The next thing I did, as I got a working dpkg, was install every deb in base (this conflicts with RH boot method and some other stuff, you have to be patient here, and it's better if you have as little RH as possible). From here everything went very smoothly, because after installing base/*.deb it's just like having installed Debian using the floppies. There are some gotchas left, but nothing big, as I remember. I hope this helps somehow... Marcelo PS: As I was on a stealth mission at the time I had to do everything as quickly as possible, and I hadn't the chance to take notes; maybe you can take some and share the results? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
At 14:37 -0500 1998-04-29, Nathan E Norman wrote: Now for the hashed over part. Is there a sane and reasonable way to either convert an existing RedHat machine to Debian, or to start the Debian install from what I have now? project/experimental/dpkg_*_arch.nondebbin.tar.gz -- Joel Espy Kleckermailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://web.espy.org/ Debian GNU/Linux Developer...http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
Hi! Nathan E Norman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. Now I've got this Netra Linux box :) AFAIK there is enhanced serial console support in 2.1.*. But don't forget, 2.1 is unstable! I have no experience with Suns at all, but Maybe you can try this: make a standard debian bootdisk use your RedHat system to compile a 2.1 kernel with console support and either replace the bootdisk's kernel with this one make the disks bootloader pass the necessary parameters for the serial console or install the kernel on your system copy the disks root image to your system make your bootloader (SILO?) load this image as initrd as the bootdisks do and pass the parameters for the serial console This is only an idea - maybe this works... Regards Rainer -- KeyID=58341901 fingerprint=A5 57 04 B3 69 88 A1 FB 78 1D B5 64 E0 BF 72 EB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Convert RedHat install to Debian ..
Part of this question has been hashed over a zillion times; for that I apologise. I've got a Sun Netra I5, with serial console only. The current Debian boot disks don't like the serial console, so I used RedHat's instead. Now I've got this Netra Linux box :) Now for the hashed over part. Is there a sane and reasonable way to either convert an existing RedHat machine to Debian, or to start the Debian install from what I have now? Remember, I can't use the Debian boot disk. (I thought someone had a URL for this) Replies, flames, etc. accepted. -- Nathan Norman MidcoNet - 410 South Phillips Avenue - Sioux Falls, SD 57104 mailto://[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.midco.net finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP Key: (0xA33B86E9) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
