I'm new to Linux/Debian, having used Macs at home and Windows at
work. I wanted to stretch my computer legs and attempt to learn Linux
by installing Debian on a PowerMac 8500/120 with 144 MB RAM and a 2 GB
hard drive and running OS 9.0. I started out with the debian-40r6-
powerpc-netinst.iso download burned to CD, 1.5 GB of free space on the
hard drive, and BootX to load the installer. I made it all the way
through the installer, with the only hiccup being that quik failed to
install. I chose to complete the installation without the bootloader,
and received a message something like: Boot manually with the /vmlinux
kernel on partition /dev/sda7 and root=/dev/sda8 passed as kernel
argument.
After booting into OS 9 and opening BootX, I typed "sda7" (no, I
didn't use the quotation marks) and "root=/dev/sda8" into the
appropriate blocks and clicked "Save to prefs" and then the "Linux"
button. After seeing a half page of text, followed by a full page of
text, the boot stops and the bottom four lines of text are as follows:
"VFS: Cannot open root device "sda8" 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. . ."
I've attempted to scour the internet for information on where to go
from here, but seem to be coming up empty handed. Any advice that I
can get on where to go from here would be much appreciated.
Amos