Hi Jonathan and all,
I think I've verified that there are two separate issues here -- the
problem with the radeon video driver, and something else that causes the
boot to lock up.
I located the correct driver:
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-8-x86.x86_64.run
I downloaded this and put it on my external drive. I then booted into
rescue mode (so I got a root shell). I mounted the external drive. I
had to chmod to make the driver installer executable, then ran it. The
driver installation apparently ran normally.
Then I removed the blacklisting for radeon. After that, I could reboot
and the "flashing lights" problem had gone away. However the boot still
locks up, with rapidly flashing messages on the screen like I described
earlier. However now, in rescue mode, the messages are all about eth0
being up. So possibly the Broadcom driver is the culprit here, though I
could do a net install without problems.
But at least I think I now have the correct video driver installed. A
problem will be that this isn't free in the Debian sense. I didn't have
to pay anything, but it's not free the way Debian means free. So I
don't know what issues this might raise for getting a new installer that
really works for these iMacs.
Cheers, Mike.
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Mike Hore mike_h...@aapt.net.au
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