Hi there, After several installation attempts, I am stuck with a very weird problem. The machine is a Workgroup Server 8550/200. There's MacOS 9.0.4 on it, and remaining free space on the disk.
Here is how I installed Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 on it: - I downloaded http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r0/powerpc/iso-cd/debian-40r0-powerpc-kde-CD-1.iso and burned it on a CD-R - of course, this is an OldWorld machine, so it will never boot off the CD - I boot into MacOS 9.0.4 - I insert the Debian 4.0 powerpc CD in the SCSI CD ROM drive, and it appears on the Desktop - I start the installation procedure by lauching BootX with the vmlinux and initrd.gz files that can be found in /install/powerpc on the CD *and* I add "priority=low" in the options (you'll see later why) - the partitions are as follow: /dev/sda8 is swap /dev/sda9 is /var/log /dev/sda10 is / - the installation happens flawlessly: the only trick is that I have chosen "priority=low" so that I can tell debian-installer NOT to install quik. Experience has show that if debian-installer attempts to install quik, not only does the installation of quik fail, but... The machine is rendered unbootable, there's a flashing ? in a floppy, and it won't boot into MacOS 9.x anymore - also, before I reboot, I mount my MacOS partition read-write and I copy the following files from /boot to the MacOS partition: vmlinux-2.6.18-4-powerpc initrd.img-2.6.18-4-powerpc When Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 is installed, well, the only thing left to do is to boot it. And here comes the major problem. I'm using BootX to boot with the following parameters: (see the little screenshot at http://pierre.baudu.in/files/20070424_BootX.jpg ) - kernel: vmlinux-2.6.18-4-powerpc - force video settings: enabled - use specified ramdisk: initrd.img-2.6.18-4-powerpc - ramdisk size: 8192 - no video driver: enabled - more kernel arguments: root=/dev/sda10 And, BootX starts booting, loads the kernel, but it always fails to mount the root filesystem. The error message is always the same: VFS: Cannot open root device "s●da10" or unknown-block(0,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) <0>Rebooting in 180 seconds.. *sigh* Notice the "weird charachter" which appears between "s" and "da10" instead of "sda10" This is not at all a typo I made. I double-checked I wasn't making any typos in the boot parameters. I think (but I might be wrong) that BootX and/or perhaps the kernel itself is adding this weird charachter to the name of the root device. Update: I used backspace to clear the field in BootX and typed properly root=/dev/sda10 Apparently there was some kind of "invisible typo". But booting still fails, now the message is: VFS: Cannot open root device "sda10" or unknown-block(0,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option But /dev/sda10 is there ! And Debian 4.0 was working properly on it since it installed flawlessly. This is puzzling. Any help would be appreciated Thank you, -- Pierre Bauduin Linux enthusiast since 1996 Debian GNU/Linux user Linux Registered User #64711