Hi,
I'm having a few problems installing debian (potato or woody) on my
7300. I'm not a beginner at linux or even linux/ppc, but it's my first
try at debian. My problem seems to be related to this one (although I'm
having issues mainly with mke2fs):
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2002/debian-powerpc-200201/msg00685.html
For the record, my setup is a 7300 with a G3 card, a 3dfx voodoo3
card, and a formac scsi card ; this setup has been working under linux
(LinuxPPC, Yellowdog 2.0, SuSE), so the hardware should not be an
issue. I have a disk on the UW scsi card, and another (on which I try
to install debian/ppc) on the mac's internal scsi. (I checked the
install disk for bad blocks but found none).
Basically, I have kernel panics mostly when trying to mke2fs the
created partition, when the partition is large... (sometimes I have
problems when writing the partition table as well...). Here are a few
tries I've been making (I do the fdisk and mke2fs directly from the
console, not the installer to know what's going on):
I tried installation with freshly downloaded ramdisks and kernels
(linux.bin), using only 2.2 since apparently the 2.4 "new" kernels for
install are not comiled with the tdfx framebuffer support, so I can't
see a thing (no matter the "no video driver" is checked or any
video=tdfx... option is passed)
1)
*format 3 partitions (400MB/3Go/800Mo) with Drive Setup (from MacOS 9.1)
* boot in potato installer using BootX 1.2.2
* fdisk, edit partitions to change types to linux, write partition => OK
* mkswap & swapon on /dev/sdb7 OK
* mke2fs /dev/sdb8 => kernel panic after "writing inodes table:done"
(message is "kernel stack overflow in process c3f480000)
* Boot again in potato installer, and try again same thing ; same panic
* Boot again in potato, and try with different partitions sizes
* fdisk: erase and create new partition table, create 1 partition
* mke2fs partition
-> works 10^6, 2.10^6, crashes with 4.10^6 blocks of 512 bytes
(for the 4.10^6, crahes while "writing superblocks and fs accounting
info...", again it is a "kernel stack overflow")
2) Under the woody installer & 2.2 kernel, basically the same thing
happens
3) Under YellowDogLinux (still installed on the other disk), mke2fs'ing
the 3Gb partition does not give any problem whatsoever. However, if I
reboot after in the debian installer, I have problems in writing to the
new partition (mounts fine, but reports an I/O error when trying to
create files on it %-( )...
4) I have also tried creating the 3 partitions with Drive setup,
changing the type to Linux native with pdisk under MacOS(9), but there
still is crash when mke2fs'ing the partition in the debian installer...
I have not tried putting the install disk on the UW card, in case
this is related to the MESH driver...
Voila... I could work around this by using no more than about 1GB
partitions, but I don't like the idea. If there is a known workaround,
please tell me !
I'm willing to make a few tests of other ramdisks of kernels if this
can help (for a 2.4 kernel, I would absolutely need one compiled with
the 3dfx Frame Buffer support). Is there any way to use a home-compiled
kernel with the install ramdisks (I tried using my 2.2.18, but got a
"no init found") ?
Best,
Vincent
--
Vincent Favre-Nicolin
ESRF- Grenoble, France
http://v.favrenicolin.free.fr
ObjCryst & Fox : http://objcryst.sourceforge.net
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