Re: PowerMac 7200-platinumfb display problem

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thursday 27 July 2006 03:35, Tomasz Grzegurzko wrote:
 http://people.debian.org/~wouter/d-i/powerpc-miboot/daily/
 I tried this image today (27-Jul-2006) and suffered the same fate..
> 
> The image from there from the 23rd of July worked for me on a g3 oldworld, so 
> give it a try.
> 
> Some time after that the miboot build broke, it should be working again since 
> August, the 4th (iirc), but I haven't had the time to test that myself.
> 
> 
> regards,
>   Holger

Hi Holger,

I've just tried three more series from powerpc-miboot. The daily
(18-Aug-2006), the beta3 and 24-Jul-2006 (as I couldn't find 23 July)
and all failed .

It is still the same problem; it cannot initialise the VGA, so after the
Penguin logo I get a black screen, no text, nothing after that (looks
like it's in "standby" mode.) This is with both boot.img and
ofonlyboot.img from those series mentioned above.

Thanks anyway,
Tomasz


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 6:43 PM, Sven Luther wrote:


On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 12:18:23AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:58:07PM +0200, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:52:24PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:

What is PTBs? :)

Powers that be...


On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld
Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8


Okay, in that case, I strongly disagree. That would be like saying
the efforts to get it working until now are worthless. The  
individual

behind debian-installer has already kicked out Sven without any
concern for the PowerPC port well being.


There is already an alternative installer planed once etch is  
released, which
will contain fixes for all those issues the d-i team left dying on  
the

road-side.


all those powerpc issues.


Thanks!  If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.

Rick

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 5:58 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:


On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:52:24PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:

What is PTBs? :)

Powers that be...


On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld
Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8


Okay, in that case, I strongly disagree. That would be like saying
the efforts to get it working until now are worthless. The individual
behind debian-installer has already kicked out Sven without any
concern for the PowerPC port well being.

Killing the OldWorld subarch in the PowerPC port would simply get  
Piotr

(I think) and I (surely) not caring anymore about miBoot... After
all, I know how to proceed with it the hard way, so the installation
easiness does not matter to me. It is only more fun for me for it to
become easy. :)

I sincerely hope I will succeed getting an access to the
debian-installer SVN repository to work on miboot targets and on
miboot-installer...


I have to agree that your work on miboot is the only real light I can  
see in the darkness surrounding Debian support of OldWorld  
PowerMacs.  I sincerely wish you luck in getting the resources  
(physical and political) that you need to finish the job.  If there  
is anything I can do to help with the process, please do not hesitate  
to ask.



Rick

Re: [PATCH] no-execute -- please test

[Albert Cahalan]

On 8/14/06, Michel Dänzer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


The diff between the log files doesn't show any explanation as to why it
works in one case but doesn't in the other, maybe the difference really
lies on the client side?


You're right. Somehow I hadn't spotted this in my syslog:

fuckup @ 1002f158 with trap 0x400 code 1000 by x-session-manag

That is the GNOME session manager.
The /proc/*/maps file contains this:

1002f000-101dc000 rwxp 1002f000 00:00 0  [heap]

Why the heck is the heap being executed?
If this is legit, how do I recognize it?
As far as I can tell, this is not the PLT area
and anyway the PLT is marked executable.

$ file /usr/bin/gnome-session
/usr/bin/gnome-session: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco
4500, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses
shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, stripped

--- some eu-readelf stuff ---
ELF Header:
 Magic:   7f 45 4c 46 01 02 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 Class: ELF32
 Data:  2's complement, big endian
 Ident Version: 1 (current)
 OS/ABI:UNIX - System V
 ABI Version:   0
 Type:  EXEC (Executable file)
 Machine:   PowerPC
 Version:   1 (current)
 Entry point address:   0x100077d0
 Start of program headers:  52 (bytes into file)
 Start of section headers:  124156 (bytes into file)
 Flags:
 Size of this header:   52 (bytes)
 Size of program header entries:32 (bytes)
 Number of program headers entries: 7
 Size of section header entries:40 (bytes)
 Number of section headers entries: 27
 Section header string table index: 26

Section Headers:
[Nr] Name Type Addr OffSize   ES Flags Lk Inf Al
[ 0]  NULL  00 00  00   0  0
[ 1] .interp  PROGBITS 1114 000114 0d  0 A  0   0  1
[ 2] .note.ABI-tagNOTE 1124 000124 20  0 A  0   0  4
[ 3] .hashHASH 1144 000144 0017ec  4 A  4   0  4
[ 4] .dynsym  DYNSYM   10001930 001930 002160 16 A  5   1  4
[ 5] .dynstr  STRTAB   10003a90 003a90 00251a  0 A  0   0  1
[ 6] .gnu.version GNU_versym   10005faa 005faa 00042c  2 A  4   0  2
[ 7] .gnu.version_r   GNU_verneed  100063d8 0063d8 70  0 A  5   2  4
[ 8] .rela.dynRELA 10006448 006448 3c 12 A  4   0  4
[ 9] .rela.pltRELA 10006484 006484 001320 12 A  4  24  4
[10] .initPROGBITS 100077a4 0077a4 28  0 AX 0   0  4
[11] .textPROGBITS 100077d0 0077d0 0132b0  0 AX 0   0 16
[12] .finiPROGBITS 1001aa80 01aa80 20  0 AX 0   0  4
[13] .rodata  PROGBITS 1001aaa0 01aaa0 003630  0 A  0   0  8
[14] .eh_framePROGBITS 1001e0d0 01e0d0 04  0 A  0   0  4
[15] .ctors   PROGBITS 1002e0d4 01e0d4 08  0 WA 0   0  4
[16] .dtors   PROGBITS 1002e0dc 01e0dc 08  0 WA 0   0  4
[17] .jcr PROGBITS 1002e0e4 01e0e4 04  0 WA 0   0  4
[18] .got2PROGBITS 1002e0e8 01e0e8 10  0 WA 0   0  1
[19] .dynamic DYNAMIC  1002e0f8 01e0f8 000180  8 WA 5   0  4
[20] .dataPROGBITS 1002e278 01e278 00018c  0 WA 0   0  4
[21] .got PROGBITS 1002e404 01e404 14  4 WAX0   0  4
[22] .sdata   PROGBITS 1002e418 01e418 18  0 WA 0   0  4
[23] .sbssNOBITS   1002e430 01e430 000118  0 WA 0   0  4
[24] .plt NOBITS   1002e548 01e430 001368  0 WAX0   0  4
[25] .bss NOBITS   1002f8b0 01e430 78  0 WA 0   0  4
[26] .shstrtabSTRTAB    01e430 ca  00   0  1

Program Headers:
 Type   Offset   VirtAddr   PhysAddr   FileSiz  MemSiz   Flg Align
 PHDR   0x34 0x1034 0x1034 0xe0 0xe0 R E 0x4
 INTERP 0x000114 0x1114 0x1114 0x0d 0x0d R   0x1
   [Requesting program interpreter: /lib/ld.so.1]
 LOAD   0x00 0x1000 0x1000 0x01e0d4 0x01e0d4 R E 0x1
 LOAD   0x01e0d4 0x1002e0d4 0x1002e0d4 0x00035c 0x001854 RWE 0x1
 DYNAMIC0x01e0f8 0x1002e0f8 0x1002e0f8 0x000180 0x000180 RW  0x4
 NOTE   0x000124 0x1124 0x1124 0x20 0x20 R   0x4
 GNU_STACK  0x00 0x 0x 0x00 0x00 RW  0x4


Section to Segment mapping:
 Segment Sections...
  00
  01  [RO: .interp]
  02  [RO: .interp .note.ABI-tag .hash .dynsym .dynstr
.gnu.version .gnu.version_r .rela.dyn .rela.plt .init .text .fini .
rodata .eh_

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 12:18:23AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:58:07PM +0200, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:52:24PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > > On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> > > >What is PTBs? :)
> > > Powers that be...
> > 
> > On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > > Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld
> > > Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8
> > 
> > Okay, in that case, I strongly disagree. That would be like saying
> > the efforts to get it working until now are worthless. The individual
> > behind debian-installer has already kicked out Sven without any
> > concern for the PowerPC port well being.
> 
> There is already an alternative installer planed once etch is released, which
> will contain fixes for all those issues the d-i team left dying on the
> road-side.

all those powerpc issues.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:58:07PM +0200, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:52:24PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> > >What is PTBs? :)
> > Powers that be...
> 
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld
> > Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8
> 
> Okay, in that case, I strongly disagree. That would be like saying
> the efforts to get it working until now are worthless. The individual
> behind debian-installer has already kicked out Sven without any
> concern for the PowerPC port well being.

There is already an alternative installer planed once etch is released, which
will contain fixes for all those issues the d-i team left dying on the
road-side.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:52:24PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> >What is PTBs? :)
> Powers that be...

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld
> Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8

Okay, in that case, I strongly disagree. That would be like saying
the efforts to get it working until now are worthless. The individual
behind debian-installer has already kicked out Sven without any
concern for the PowerPC port well being.

Killing the OldWorld subarch in the PowerPC port would simply get Piotr
(I think) and I (surely) not caring anymore about miBoot... After
all, I know how to proceed with it the hard way, so the installation
easiness does not matter to me. It is only more fun for me for it to
become easy. :)

I sincerely hope I will succeed getting an access to the
debian-installer SVN repository to work on miboot targets and on
miboot-installer...

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
: :'  :
`. `'`   Free Software Developer
  `- Unix Sys & Net Admin


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 03:06:03PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> I don't think the errata takes any notice of the fact that, quite  
> independent of "freeness" considerations, there is *no* working boot  
> loader for the 2.6.16 kernel on an OldWorld Mac.  I've tried both  
> bootx and quik and neither of them work on my beige G3.  In it's  
> current state, even if it were free, miboot would not be a workable  
> solution because it only works from floppies.

Well, it works on a hard disk, but as I said earlier, it is not
trivial to get it working by hand.

Cheers,
-- 
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: :'  :
`. `'`   Free Software Developer
  `- Unix Sys & Net Admin


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:56:52PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Do you think it will be ready for inclusion in etch at release time?

Hard to say, since Piotr and I have no deadline... :)

Cheers,
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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:


Well, aside the issue of booting, the kernel runs just
fine and so does the user space... As you can look at
, I think
it is partially admitted in "Oldworld powerpc boot floppies will not
work as miboot is not included".


I think that is just referring to the fact that miboot is not (yet)  
"free" so it can't be included in an official debian distribution.   
As noted, wouter provides floppy images with a working miboot and a  
working kernel (almost -- modulo the video problems I've mentioned.)


I don't think the errata takes any notice of the fact that, quite  
independent of "freeness" considerations, there is *no* working boot  
loader for the 2.6.16 kernel on an OldWorld Mac.  I've tried both  
bootx and quik and neither of them work on my beige G3.  In it's  
current state, even if it were free, miboot would not be a workable  
solution because it only works from floppies.


Rick

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:





Wow!  great!  I'm really glad somebody's working on that.

Do you think it will be ready for inclusion in etch at release time?

Rick

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 2:31 PM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:


What is PTBs? :)


Powers that be...

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 11:44:23AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld  
> Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8

What is PTBs? :)

Well, aside the issue of booting, the kernel runs just
fine and so does the user space... As you can look at
, I think
it is partially admitted in "Oldworld powerpc boot floppies will not
work as miboot is not included".

> One thing I've discovered:  The miboot floppy at http:// 
> people.debian.org/~wouter/d-i/powerpc-miboot/daily/powerpc/floppy/  
> contain the "2.6.16-2-powerpc-miboot (Debian 2.6.16-7)" kernel, which  
> is the same base version (different config, presumably) as the kernel  
> on the beta3 CDs.  And that kernel (the one on the miboot floppy)  
> boots just fine(*) on my beige G3.  So the problem seems to be a  
> configuration issue, not anything fundamental.

I am glad to read it is nothing fundamental like the structure of
the kernel and I see Wouter has played a bit with it. :)

Indeed, I also experienced the same symptoms you describe when the
kernel is too large. It will be fixed when miBoot will be rebuildable
with the GNU toolchain.

> (*) Well... almost "just fine".  There is a small problem with the  
> video parameters -- some columns of the text on the screen seem to  
> flicker.  If I could figure out how to modify the kernel command line  
> arguments (specifically the video options) on the floppy, I might be  
> able to fix that.  Interestingly, "works just fine" only applies to  
> the "boot" floppy.  The "ofonlyboot" floppy does not work -- it gets  
> the same symptoms as I described in Bug#369760, and as someone else  
> has described in Bug#380187.

It is also scheduled to add the possiblity of adding kernel arguments
and even selecting different kernels, but in the mean time, you can do
that inside the kernel configuration, as there is an option for that.

> Currently, miboot (leaving aside issues of "freeness") only works for  
> floppies?  Do you think there is any chance of it's working for  
> booting off of CDs or hard-disks, once we can fiddle with the source  
> code?

It works for hard disks too, but as I explain in my other post some
hours ago, it is a painful process to setup. It does not work on CD,
because there is no low-level MacOSROM calls for that in the code.
However, that could also be added by using EMILE macoslib which is
what we intend to do, but the CD part will only be available when
Laurent will have done what he says at 
under Latest News/Next step.

Cheers,
-- 
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: :'  :
`. `'`   Free Software Developer
  `- Unix Sys & Net Admin


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Re: wmv3 on powerpc(and all)

[You]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 11:17:00PM +0200, Bin Zhang scribbled this nonsense:

> On 8/15/06, You <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >Are there w32codecs for mplayer on PPC?   I had considered installing 
> >mplayer on one of my PowerMacs, but without
> >the ability to play WMV files, it hardly seems worthwhile.
> 
> No.
> With FFmpeg VC-1 codecs, we don't need w32codecs.
> See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1
> 

Thanks.  I will check it out as soon as I finish skimming through the messages 
in this list.


-- 
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Blackburn Radio Incorporated:  One media empire whose fate is extinction.
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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Harold Johnson]

Thank you for taking the time to report this information here, Aurélien!  There are those of us who *really* appreciate it.  Over the past year or so, my primary portable has been an OldWorld PowerBook G3 ("Wallstreet 2").  This PowerBook is currently running Xubuntu, but I'm interested in trying Debian again.  (I enjoy using Xubuntu a great deal, but I'm interesting in trying a pure CLI again, and Debian is simply more "pure" to me than Xubuntu.)  I've been using BootX, but it's intriguing for me to hear more about the current state of miboot (and how to use it).  I'd really like to use miboot once I can figure out how, and your report here provides some much-desired information.

 
Thanks again!
 
Harold J. Johnson
 
On 8/18/06, Aurélien GÉRÔME <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 07:58:46AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:> Notice that Piotr, Aurelien gerome and Jeremie Koenig are working on freeing
> miboot, which would allow to make it to main, and that Aurelien Gerome and> some of his friends apparently succeeded in puting a kernel with builtin> initrd onto a a HFS partition on the harddisk and boot from there. This would
> be akin to how the prep or chrp zImage is copied to the PReP partition on IBM> hardware, after having be passed through mkvmlinuz. The plan is to, once> miboot is freed, to add support to mkvmlinuz for this way of handling things.
OK, more than a year and a half later, I think it is time to reportpublically on how to install miBoot on a hard disk in the only waypossible for now. :)miBoot is the OldWorld PowerPC Macintosh bootloader coded by Benjamin
Herrenschmidt to replace his BootX bootloader which was performingthe same task, but from a running MacOS. Unlike BootX, miBoot doesnot require MacOS, it only needs the MacOSROM: it is the best solutionfor Debian.
The issue on these OldWorld PowerPC Macintosh machines is thatOF is completely broken and can boot neither from hardisk nor fromfloppy. Its only purpose is to launch the MacOSROM. I am very skepticalconcerning success reports with Quik on these machines, though some
probably work... Hence, Quik is not the recommended way in Debian toboot all the OldWorld machines.So what is the issue with miBoot? Well, miBoot is GPL'ed software,so it is fine. However, it requires proprietary tools, namely
Metrowerks Codewarrior, to build, and moreover, a specific version4.0 Pro... Thus, it cannot enter Debian main, the installer cannotdepend on it, and we cannot modify it to suit our needs which isreally problematic. This is what Piotr Krysiuk and I are working on
right now: porting it to the GNU toolchain...Two years ago, Jérémie Koenig coded rsrce, a tool needed bymiBoot to be installed in a fake System MacOS resource fork on a HFSpartition. He also prepared a preliminary package for miBoot and an
install script to get it installed on the HFS partition. I did notown an Oldworld machine at that time, but it is then I tried it withLudovic Reslinger on his Beige G3 with a 2.6.8 Sarge kernel...The hard disk of the machine was completely blank. It took us 3 or 4
days of hacking to get it working after numerous attempts... So to sumup, this is what we did in the end with the hardware we disposed then:* We used MacOS installation floppies to create the partition table
layout and a 100 MB HFS partition. We needed the proprietarybootblock installed by MacOS, because the hfsutils do not install itwhen they format a partition in HFS. (That bootblock is proprietaryand I am currently reversing it with the help of EMILE m68k HFS
bootblock and the specifications Piotr wrote for the PowerPC HFSbootblock...)* We only had an i386 machine with a viable Debian system to mount anIDE hard disk and a powerpc laptop to work on that hard
disk. Therefore, we switched the hard disk to the i386 and wemounted the HFS partition detected by the i386 kernel via NBD onthe powerpc laptop.* On the powerpc laptop, we used Jérémie's miBoot install script to
put miBoot and the Debian-patched kernel we recompiled without anymodules on the HFS partition of the exported NBD HFS partition. Whywithout any modules? Because previous attempts show us that miBootcould not handle XCOFF dummy kernel+ramdisk image, despite showing
the contrary in its source code. We could not recompile it anyway. :(The machine booted fine and it still runs fine since then with a hugeuptime... The glitch is we did not touch it again since then to make
tests, because it is a production server for Ludovic. :)> More info on this on the debootloaders alioth project, there is also a mailing> list regarding miboot (and emile) there.>> >  curiously, i am also trying to install debian on a powerbook 500 series
> >  (pre powerpc, but mac) (i have two, a 520 and a 540, as well as an earlier> >  performa model) ---> >they have a new booter which i would try soon, called emile, it seems> >  to be combining functions of miboot and quik and more. very nice ...
> >  --- yes my 68k macs have floppies, that work:

Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Rick Thomas]

On Aug 18, 2006, at 7:59 AM, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:


Hi,

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 03:19:18AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

Has *anybody* had any success getting the "Linux version 2.6.16-2-
powerpc (Debian 2.6.16-17)" kernel to boot an OldWorld machine with
BootX?  Or *any* kernel after 2.6.15?


I think the anwser is plainly no. :(


Perhaps the Debian PTBs should simply admit that PowerPC OldWorld  
Macintosh is an unsupported sub-arch for Debian etch?   /-8




Well, you would be better off using miBoot anyway. I think I will
produce miBoot floppies for the last Debian kernel for you to try...


One thing I've discovered:  The miboot floppy at http:// 
people.debian.org/~wouter/d-i/powerpc-miboot/daily/powerpc/floppy/  
contain the "2.6.16-2-powerpc-miboot (Debian 2.6.16-7)" kernel, which  
is the same base version (different config, presumably) as the kernel  
on the beta3 CDs.  And that kernel (the one on the miboot floppy)  
boots just fine(*) on my beige G3.  So the problem seems to be a  
configuration issue, not anything fundamental.


(*) Well... almost "just fine".  There is a small problem with the  
video parameters -- some columns of the text on the screen seem to  
flicker.  If I could figure out how to modify the kernel command line  
arguments (specifically the video options) on the floppy, I might be  
able to fix that.  Interestingly, "works just fine" only applies to  
the "boot" floppy.  The "ofonlyboot" floppy does not work -- it gets  
the same symptoms as I described in Bug#369760, and as someone else  
has described in Bug#380187.






What has changed between the Sarge kernel (which boots just fine) and
this one that would have such a catastrophic effect?


Maybe the image is too heavy, some kernel defines changed, or BootX
cannot find the sections of the image anymore? We cannot fiddle with
BootX source code to see what happens, but we will be able with miBoot
source code when it will be ready. :)


Currently, miboot (leaving aside issues of "freeness") only works for  
floppies?  Do you think there is any chance of it's working for  
booting off of CDs or hard-disks, once we can fiddle with the source  
code?




Cheers,
--
 .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
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`. `'`   Free Software Developer
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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:45:42PM +0200, Torbjorn Pettersson wrote:
> Aurélien GÉRÔME <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Well, for the sake of completeness, 6 kinds if we add the early Macs
> > with Motorola 6502 processors like the Commodore 64 had. ;)
> 
> Eh? What "Mac" would that be? You are not confusing it with the early
> Apple I,II,III computers are you? The Lisa and the first Macintosh;es
> all were Motorola 68xxx - based.

Indeed, I was thinking about the early Apple machines and now I
realise they were not branded as Macintosh. :)

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
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`. `'`   Free Software Developer
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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Torbjorn Pettersson]

Aurélien GÉRÔME <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 01:39:31PM +0200, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> > Like Sven explains above, you have 5 kinds of Macintosh machines in
> > chronological order:
> 
> Well, for the sake of completeness, 6 kinds if we add the early Macs
> with Motorola 6502 processors like the Commodore 64 had. ;)
> 

Eh? What "Mac" would that be? You are not confusing it with the early
Apple I,II,III computers are you? The Lisa and the first Macintosh;es
all were Motorola 68xxx - based.

> Cheers,
> -- 
>  .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
> : :'  :
> `. `'`   Free Software Developer
>   `- Unix Sys & Net Admin

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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

Hi,

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 03:19:18AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Has *anybody* had any success getting the "Linux version 2.6.16-2- 
> powerpc (Debian 2.6.16-17)" kernel to boot an OldWorld machine with  
> BootX?  Or *any* kernel after 2.6.15?

I think the anwser is plainly no. :(

Well, you would be better off using miBoot anyway. I think I will
produce miBoot floppies for the last Debian kernel for you to try...

> What has changed between the Sarge kernel (which boots just fine) and  
> this one that would have such a catastrophic effect?

Maybe the image is too heavy, some kernel defines changed, or BootX
cannot find the sections of the image anymore? We cannot fiddle with
BootX source code to see what happens, but we will be able with miBoot
source code when it will be ready. :)

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
: :'  :
`. `'`   Free Software Developer
  `- Unix Sys & Net Admin


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 01:39:31PM +0200, Aurélien GÉRÔME wrote:
> Like Sven explains above, you have 5 kinds of Macintosh machines in
> chronological order:

Well, for the sake of completeness, 6 kinds if we add the early Macs
with Motorola 6502 processors like the Commodore 64 had. ;)

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.   Aurélien GÉRÔME
: :'  :
`. `'`   Free Software Developer
  `- Unix Sys & Net Admin


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Re: Bug#382129: Beta3 won't boot on OldWorld PowerPC Mac

[Aurélien GÉRÔME]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 07:58:46AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> Notice that Piotr, Aurelien gerome and Jeremie Koenig are working on freeing
> miboot, which would allow to make it to main, and that Aurelien Gerome and
> some of his friends apparently succeeded in puting a kernel with builtin
> initrd onto a a HFS partition on the harddisk and boot from there. This would
> be akin to how the prep or chrp zImage is copied to the PReP partition on IBM
> hardware, after having be passed through mkvmlinuz. The plan is to, once
> miboot is freed, to add support to mkvmlinuz for this way of handling things.

OK, more than a year and a half later, I think it is time to report
publically on how to install miBoot on a hard disk in the only way
possible for now. :)

miBoot is the OldWorld PowerPC Macintosh bootloader coded by Benjamin
Herrenschmidt to replace his BootX bootloader which was performing
the same task, but from a running MacOS. Unlike BootX, miBoot does
not require MacOS, it only needs the MacOSROM: it is the best solution
for Debian.

The issue on these OldWorld PowerPC Macintosh machines is that
OF is completely broken and can boot neither from hardisk nor from
floppy. Its only purpose is to launch the MacOSROM. I am very skeptical
concerning success reports with Quik on these machines, though some
probably work... Hence, Quik is not the recommended way in Debian to
boot all the OldWorld machines.

So what is the issue with miBoot? Well, miBoot is GPL'ed software,
so it is fine. However, it requires proprietary tools, namely
Metrowerks Codewarrior, to build, and moreover, a specific version
4.0 Pro... Thus, it cannot enter Debian main, the installer cannot
depend on it, and we cannot modify it to suit our needs which is
really problematic. This is what Piotr Krysiuk and I are working on
right now: porting it to the GNU toolchain...

Two years ago, Jérémie Koenig coded rsrce, a tool needed by
miBoot to be installed in a fake System MacOS resource fork on a HFS
partition. He also prepared a preliminary package for miBoot and an
install script to get it installed on the HFS partition. I did not
own an Oldworld machine at that time, but it is then I tried it with
Ludovic Reslinger on his Beige G3 with a 2.6.8 Sarge kernel...

The hard disk of the machine was completely blank. It took us 3 or 4
days of hacking to get it working after numerous attempts... So to sum
up, this is what we did in the end with the hardware we disposed then:

* We used MacOS installation floppies to create the partition table
  layout and a 100 MB HFS partition. We needed the proprietary
  bootblock installed by MacOS, because the hfsutils do not install it
  when they format a partition in HFS. (That bootblock is proprietary
  and I am currently reversing it with the help of EMILE m68k HFS
  bootblock and the specifications Piotr wrote for the PowerPC HFS
  bootblock...)

* We only had an i386 machine with a viable Debian system to mount an
  IDE hard disk and a powerpc laptop to work on that hard
  disk. Therefore, we switched the hard disk to the i386 and we
  mounted the HFS partition detected by the i386 kernel via NBD on
  the powerpc laptop.

* On the powerpc laptop, we used Jérémie's miBoot install script to
  put miBoot and the Debian-patched kernel we recompiled without any
  modules on the HFS partition of the exported NBD HFS partition. Why
  without any modules? Because previous attempts show us that miBoot
  could not handle XCOFF dummy kernel+ramdisk image, despite showing
  the contrary in its source code. We could not recompile it anyway. :(

The machine booted fine and it still runs fine since then with a huge
uptime... The glitch is we did not touch it again since then to make
tests, because it is a production server for Ludovic. :)

> More info on this on the debootloaders alioth project, there is also a mailing
> list regarding miboot (and emile) there.
> 
> >  curiously, i am also trying to install debian on a powerbook 500 series
> >  (pre powerpc, but mac) (i have two, a 520 and a 540, as well as an earlier
> >  performa model) ---
> >they have a new booter which i would try soon, called emile, it seems
> >  to be combining functions of miboot and quik and more. very nice ...
> >  --- yes my 68k macs have floppies, that work:
> >  
> >  http://emile.sourceforge.net/
> >  
> >  he's working on a cd version !!!

Indeed, Laurent Vivier is a great Mac hacker and a wonderful person. :)

Wouter Verhelst has kindly accepted to move its private SVN repository
of EMILE packaging in the Alioth Debootloaders project to team-maintain
it inside Debian. There is also an EMILE package in the archive
if you want to try it. Do not hesitate to post your success on the
debootloaders-emile mailing-list on Alioth.

> >  to my understanding my pci-based open firmware ppc macs should not
> >  use miboot anyway, isn't that for nubus, that is pre OF/pci power macs ?
> >  of course whatever works, but as i already have two dead fl