Hi, On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Wicher W.O. Deddens wrote:
> I'm trying to install Debian on a PPC 8500/150, 96 Mb, 2 Gb HD for > Webserving and Mailserving purposes. I downloaded CD1 for PowerPC, wrote > it to a > bootable disk, made a boot floppy and a root.bin floppy, made partitions > according the example in the manual: a 500 mb other system (MacOS 8.1, but > not > installed yet), a 32 Mb Swap and the rest as a Linux partition. > After booting the system on the floppies I get the Installation Main Menu > (text oriented), but CD1 doesn't mount and I don't get any further. > > Who can help me with detailed instructions? > > First: you should try the debian-powerpc list. You can try to find out what is wrong. Switch throught the various virtual consoles (ctrl+command+Fn or ctrl+option+Fn or command+option+Fn, I cannot remember). Two of them log information about the installation proces. You can also switch to the second console and try to mount the cdrom manually. Also note that it is not necessary to have a MacOS partition. Playing a bit with the open firmware will boot Linux directly. This is what you should do: - first check if you can access your OpenFirmware directly by pressing Command+Option+O+F simultaneously when restarting the computer. If you get a text orientated screen, you are ready to alter your OF. - If this does not work, you have a buggy OF and/or input/output is set to the serial port. To make this work, install a tiny MacOS and download an OpenFirmware program with patch. I found these (among other good information) on www.netbsd.org->powerpc. Enable input from 'kbd' and output to /chaos/control. Now reboot and boot into the OpenFirmware again. Now you should have control. - use 'printenv' to view the current settings. I had to change the following to make Linux boot directly: setenv load-base 600000 setenv boot-device scsi-int/[EMAIL PROTECTED]:0 setenv boot-file /vmlinux root=/dev/sda2 This will boot from the first SCSI disk on the first adapter, with Linux installed on the second partition (the first partition contains information about the harddisk and paritions). You will have to play with this a lot before your can boot into the installation process. The important thing is to use MacOS to make your OF viewable, boot into the installation process, repartition your harddisk, install Linux and install 'quik' BEFORE rebooting the first time. Then boot into OF and set the settings above, boot Linux again and continue the installation. A few things you should be aware of: - if you think you messed up your OF, you can always reset it with command+option+P+R - if you boot MacOS (from CD, for example), your OF is reset to it's defaults - this only works with old-style powermacs. New style use 'ybin', consult www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ybin/ for that - when having problems, read the OF information on the netbsd webpage and the section in the yellowdoglinux (www.yellowdoglinux.org) installation guide - when you turn on your mac, Linux does not get loaded because the harddisk is not spinned up. Wait a second or three and reboot, or do a trick described in 'man nvsetenv' - read 'man nvsetenv' - /vmlinux may NOT be a symlink I hope this helped a bit, Greetz, Sebastiaan
