Hi !
I just network installed a debian 3.0 (woody) on an Apple Imac (G3 350MHz) with 128 MB of RAM, and here are some tips for doing it. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR DEVELOPPERS: There is a problem with the bootfloppies if you want to install yaboot. (the mac equivalent of lilo) : mac-fdisk is not available until the system is installed and the yabootconfig script does not work until the system is rebooted. Hardware Nota Bene: IMAC [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo cpu : 740/750 temperature : 50-52 C (uncalibrated) clock : 350MHz revision : 2.2 (pvr 0008 0202) bogomips : 697.95 machine : PowerMac2,1 motherboard : PowerMac2,1 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh L2 cache : 512K unified memory : 128MB pmac-generation : NewWorld Here a small howto for whoever might need it: STEP ONE: CONFIGURE YOUR SERVER Of course you need a dhcp (or bootp) server and also a tftp server. Here are the config files I used on the PC server (mandrake): For the tftp server, add in /etc/inetd.conf: tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -r blksize -s /tftpboot For the dhcp server, adapt the following /etc/dhcpd.conf: ---DHCPD.CONF BEGIN--- option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; server-name "server"; subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0{ range 192.168.1.101 192.168.1.250; default-lease-time 86400; max-lease-time 172800; ddns-domainname "mylan"; ddns-rev-domainname "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa"; option domain-name "mylan"; option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1; option routers 192.168.1.1; option netbios-name-servers 192.168.1.1; option netbios-node-type 8; } group { use-host-decl-names on; host imac { filename "yaboot"; hardware ethernet 00:0A:27:7C:3E:C4; fixed-address 192.168.1.141; } } ---DHCPD.CONF END--- STEP TWO: GET THE REQUIRED FILES FOR TFTPBOOT Moreover, you need a readable /tftpboot with the 4 files: linux.bin root.bin yaboot yaboot.conf Here is my /tftpboot/yaboot.conf: ---YABOOT.CONF BEGIN--- device=enet: partition=0 timeout=50 init-message="Debian GNU/Linux Network boot" default=linux image=linux.bin label=linux initrd=root.bin initrd-size=8192 ---YABOOT.CONF END--- I used the linux.bin from debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/new-powermac/linux.bin I used the root.bin as stated from the Installation manual section "11.2.3.1.3 TFTP boot images" from debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/prep/images-1.44/root.bin And I used the yaboot from debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/new-powermac/yaboot STEP THREE: NETWORK BOOT THE IMAC To network boot the Imac, I needed to press at the same time at startup the following 4 keys: (APPLE) + (ALT) + (o) + (f) This opens an openfirmware prompt. Then (finding the right syntax was a problem) I had to enter: boot enet:,yaboot enet:/tftpboot Hint: just net booting with 'n' at startup did not load the yaboot, even with the right dhcpd.conf: I had to manually enter the exact line above. STEP FOUR: CONFIGURE YOUR BASIC DEBIAN SYSTEM Here starts the problem with yaboot... As there is no mac-fdisk on the root image, I used the cfdisk program to create partitions, and then installed debian woody. At the point when the installation program wanted to install yaboot just before rebooting, it failed (as expected)... However, now I could find mac-fdisk on /target, copy it in /sbin, umount /target and run /sbin/mac-fdisk to partition again. This destroyed the fresh install, but then I could restart the (network) installation from scratch again on the newly mac-fdisked partition. However, yabootconfig failed again... A quick look through the sources showed that yabootconfig does not expect / to be mounted in /target (the first lines handle PATH_PREFIX, but when trying to set INSTALL and OFBOOT, yabootconfig does not find yaboot and ofboot... I add to change the sections with: INSTALL=/target/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot OFBOOT="\nmagicboot=/target/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot" in order for yabootconfig to run nicely. However, it failed running yaboot because of missing libraries. I had to create a /etc/ld.so.conf with /target/lib /target/usr/lib and rerun ldconfig in order to sucessfully run yaboot (hence yabootconfig)... STEP FIVE: CONFIGURE THE REST OF YOUR DEBIAN SYSTEM I found a nice XF86Config-4 for my Rage 128 RL on the debian powerpc mailing list from Chris Tillman dated 04/30/2002. Cool ! Other than this, all is just fine thanks to dselect and apt-get... Regards, Antoine Brenner -- brenner at via dot ecp dot fr