Re: Testing boot-floppies on iMac

[Chris Tillman]

On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 07:25:59PM -0500, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 01:12:26AM +0100, Michel D?nzer wrote:
> 
> > On Sam, 2002-02-16 at 21:27, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > Also, how can I help to test future PowerPC boot-floppies?  Is there
> > > some way to network-boot this beast, or do I have to continue to use
> > > CD-Rs?
> > 
> > You can boot the installer kernel with the ramdisk from HD with yaboot, or
> > am I missing something?
> 
> Yes, I suppose I could do that.  Thanks.

IMHO that is the easiest way to boot the installer. There are full
instructions in TFM.

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Re: Testing boot-floppies on iMac

[Colin Walters]

On Sat, 2002-02-16 at 15:27, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> Yesterday, I got an iMac (NewWorld) to play with at work, and decided to
> install woody on it.  It has no floppy drive, so the only bootable woody
> installation media that I could find were ISO images at:
> 
> http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/
> 
> which I burned onto CD-R.

If you have another machine on the local network, netbooting is the best
option, in my opinion.  

http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/doc/ch-install-methods.en.html#s-install-tftp

> I couldn't figure out how to tag a partition as swap, this being my first
> PowerPC installation.  the mac-fdisk help was not helpful).  I continued
> without one, and have since learned (from
> http://penguinppc.org/projects/yaboot/doc/mac-fdisk-basics.shtml linked from
> the release notes) that it should be named 'swap'.  I assume this would have
> worked; if so, it should be mentioned directly in the release notes.

The entire mac-fdisk-basics document is really required reading for
installing on PowerPC.

> Also, how can I help to test future PowerPC boot-floppies?  Is there some
> way to network-boot this beast, or do I have to continue to use CD-Rs?

We definitely need more testers for the PowerPC boot-floppies!  If you
have trouble netbooting, someone is almost always on openprojects.net
#debianppc (I'm "walters" on IRC).


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Re: Testing boot-floppies on iMac

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 01:12:26AM +0100, Michel D?nzer wrote:

> On Sam, 2002-02-16 at 21:27, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > initialization.  I had a Device section specifying Driver "ati", but
> > until I added the BusID parameter, it said that it couldn't find a
> > matching device section for the card.
> 
> A device section without a bus ID is normally assigend to the primary
> adapter; unfortunately, the primary adapter isn't recognized reliably yet
> on Macs. Providing the bus ID is the safe bet, and there's a debconf
> question for it now.

Wonderful, so that's fixed as well.

> > Also, how can I help to test future PowerPC boot-floppies?  Is there
> > some way to network-boot this beast, or do I have to continue to use
> > CD-Rs?
> 
> You can boot the installer kernel with the ramdisk from HD with yaboot, or
> am I missing something?

Yes, I suppose I could do that.  Thanks.

-- 
 - mdz


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Re: Testing boot-floppies on iMac

[Michel Dänzer]

On Sam, 2002-02-16 at 21:27, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> 
> After all packages were installed, I set about trying to get X working, and
> (after using the debconf prompts to get an initial configuration) co-workers
> and I fiddled with it for some time before discovering that we had to
> specify the PCI BusID in XF86Config-4, and google for the correct monitor
> sync information.  I don't know why I had to specify the BusID, as it
> detected the video card (an ATI) at the correct PCI bus/slot/func during
> initialization.  I had a Device section specifying Driver "ati", but until I
> added the BusID parameter, it said that it couldn't find a matching device
> section for the card.

A device section without a bus ID is normally assigend to the primary
adapter; unfortunately, the primary adapter isn't recognized reliably
yet on Macs. Providing the bus ID is the safe bet, and there's a debconf
question for it now.


> Also, how can I help to test future PowerPC boot-floppies?  Is there some
> way to network-boot this beast, or do I have to continue to use CD-Rs?

You can boot the installer kernel with the ramdisk from HD with yaboot,
or am I missing something?


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast


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Testing boot-floppies on iMac

[Matt Zimmerman]

Yesterday, I got an iMac (NewWorld) to play with at work, and decided to
install woody on it.  It has no floppy drive, so the only bootable woody
installation media that I could find were ISO images at:

http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/

which I burned onto CD-R.

Unfortunately, at the time there were only images from last December[0] labeled
"3.0pre", which contained at least one major known bug (the bad mac-fdisk)
which stopped my installation in its tracks).  I was able to continue the
installation by bringing up the network (which worked flawlessly via DHCP)
and wget'ing a fixed mac-fdisk from the 3.0.19 floppy images.

I couldn't figure out how to tag a partition as swap, this being my first
PowerPC installation.  the mac-fdisk help was not helpful).  I continued
without one, and have since learned (from
http://penguinppc.org/projects/yaboot/doc/mac-fdisk-basics.shtml linked from
the release notes) that it should be named 'swap'.  I assume this would have
worked; if so, it should be mentioned directly in the release notes.

In tasksel, I selected "X window system", "desktop environment", "C and
C++" and "Python".

During package configuration, I was bitten by pydb #133520, which is fixed
and should get into woody eventually.  If it doesn't, tasksel #129520
removes pydb from the task anyway.

After all packages were installed, I set about trying to get X working, and
(after using the debconf prompts to get an initial configuration) co-workers
and I fiddled with it for some time before discovering that we had to
specify the PCI BusID in XF86Config-4, and google for the correct monitor
sync information.  I don't know why I had to specify the BusID, as it
detected the video card (an ATI) at the correct PCI bus/slot/func during
initialization.  I had a Device section specifying Driver "ati", but until I
added the BusID parameter, it said that it couldn't find a matching device
section for the card.

Once the X server was working, I was very confused to find that no window
manager had been installed, nor had xterm.  Fortunately, gnome-terminal was
there from the desktop environment task.  I assume this was tasksel #129217.

To summarize:

- boot-floppies 3.0.19 has a fix for the mac-fdisk problem
- pydb 1.01-5 fixes #133520 (urgency=low)
- tasksel 1.15 fixes #129217 and #129520 (urgency=low)

The new tasksel will make it into woody in 2 days according to
update_excuses.html, and boot-floppies 3.0.19 is already current, so my
problems seem to be already fixed and propagating.  The situation with
tasksel is confusing, though; how does the delay help, when tasksel will
only really be tested during new installations?

Also, how can I help to test future PowerPC boot-floppies?  Is there some
way to network-boot this beast, or do I have to continue to use CD-Rs?

[0] There seem to be 3.0.19 ISOs at that URL as of today.  Thanks to Ian
Eure for providing these so that I could get up and running with woody

-- 
 - mdz


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