I've been working on getting woody installed on an old powercenter 120. My goal is for it to be a stand alone ftp server, running only debian, with no macos, no monitor, no kybd or mouse. (I'm going to be co-locating it once I have everything running properly, so I need it to be able to boot up unattended)
I've done a ton of research, and thanks to the help of many web pages, got debian installed. (if there is any interest in it, I can list the most useful sites I hit, as the documentation for the install is a little light when it comes to problem child old-world machines like this one.) I've almost got the machine booting properly, but it's just not quite there. I haven't got the appropriate cabling, so I can't get a terminal session to open firmware, and as this particular machine has a buggy OF implementation (big surprise, right...) I can't use my monitor to view the OF environment at boot. I've been using the boot/root disk combo to get the installer running, then I execute a shell, and from ash, I can enter commands through nvsetenv to make the changes I want to OF. here's what I have it set to, where it will actually boot: boot-device "/bandit/gc/53c94/[EMAIL PROTECTED]:3" boot-file "/bandit/gc/53c94/[EMAIL PROTECTED]:3/boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-powerpc" boot-command "boot linux" after entering these parameters into OF, I reboot. the machine chimes, then chimes again, then, after a brief pause, the monitor comes up, and I'm into the os. after logging into debian, I run nvsetenv to double check the settings, and everything is how I left it. the only problem is that if I tell the system to reboot, it fails to do so. it just sits there with a blank monitor, and even if I wait a while, I can't ping it, so I know it hasn't booted. at this point, I have to zap the pram to get it to boot from a floppy, go back into the installer, drop to ash, reset the variables in OF and then I tell the installer to reboot the system. it chimes twice, and then I'm in linux again. I'm using quik as a bootloader, and my quik.conf is properly configured, and I've upgraded the kernel to 2.4.18-powerpc from 2.2.20 as I would like to have the system see the promise ata 100 card I installed along with a 60gb hd. getting those to show up is another problem, but it's one I haven't researched yet; if you happen to know how to get linux to see a pci card, and get the drive mounted, feel free to let me know, but I'm going to do the legwork first before I actually come begging for help :) any help/advice to solving this problem would be greatly appreciated. thank you --wylie
