On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 09:24:08PM +0000, Deinsti Suski wrote: > Recently me and a friend of mine have been trying to install Debian Sid on > an IBM pSeries 550 server to no avail; we have attempted a variety of > methods such as installing GRUB with everything on an / ext4 partition, > GRUB with a separate ext2 /boot and ext4 /, Yaboot with everything on an > ext4 / and Yaboot with a ext2 /boot and ext4 / - however none of them work; > > For GRUB, it just freezes at 'Welcome to GRUB!' with no disk activity and > it never continues no matter the partition setup while for Yaboot, it > always fails at > "can't get <device_type> for device: <NULL> > <NULL>:-1,ls: Unable to open file, Invalid device" > > we tried altering yaboot.conf by swapping out uuid's with /dev/sda2 among > other things but no matter what it's always the same error > > The hardware is an IBM pSeries 550 Server > Processors: 4x IBM POWER6 cards with 2-Cores at 4GHz each (Total: 8 Cores) > RAM: 92GB > HDD: Single 300GB drive (No RAID) > > Do you have any suggestions on how to get this system to boot?
I haven't done an install in quite a few years but I have a few question: Are you using dos partition table (MBR style)? How large is the PREP boot partition? Is it set as bootable? I seem to recall an 8MB prep boot partition is pretty standard and should be plenty for grub. Are you running on bare metal or is there a hypervisor involved? Does the installer boot fine and only the system after installation won't boot? What media are you booting the installer from? Which installer image are you using? -- Len Sorensen
