On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 02:49:59AM +0000, Drew Roedersheimer wrote: > I have a couple of questions that I hope someone here can answer. > I've looked around quite a bit on google, the Debian manuals, and > elsewhere but haven't found any definitive answers for these > questions. > > At work we are running Debian on some Motorola MVME2700 (prep based) > machines. I'm looking for a bootloader of some sort for these > machines so that a hosed up kernel build doesn't force me to rebuild > the whole machine. I can (and have) certainly use a network boot > to get a machine back to a usable state, but this really isn't ideal > for the delivered product. From what I understand, the firmware on > prep machines doesn't really provide a method to read from the disk > at boot time (aside from raw disk reads/writes), so there probably > isn't a trivial solution. I saw an article in the Suse ppc area > where they have some sort of bare bones kernel that gets loaded, and > which allows you to provide boot options, kernel path, etc to boot > with, but the article looked pretty dated. Does anyone have > any experience with this that could provide some hints/references? > > The default kernel that ships with Debian (I've tried Potato (2.2r6) > and Woody) locks up at boot time when accessing the SCSI controller. > Using a cross compiler and booting over the network to initialize the > machine, I've been able to build a kernel and get a machine up and > running quite well. However, ideally, I would like to simply replace > the kernel on the install CD with a kernel that doesn't lock up the > machine. I'm guessing I need the following configuration options > enabled in the kernel (not modules, obviously): > > I/O device support (SCSI drivers, etc) > ext2fs support > iso9660 support > RAM disk support > initrd support > Kernel boot options: root=/dev/ram - (anything else??) > > I think these should be all the options I need to get the install > CD to function properly. I'm assuming I can just copy the whole > first CD to a temporary location, replace the prep boot kernel(s), > make a bootable ISO with mkhybrid and the -prep-boot option, and > I should be good to go. I'm not sure that this is actually possible, > or whether or not this is the correct way to go about this process. > Also, I'm not sure which kernel(s) to replace in the ISO. Anyone > have any pointers or experience with this? >
The kernels you want to replace are linux.bin and rescue.bin. You'll probably also need a matching drivers.tgz, see the other thread about this. The kernels currently in the archive are known not to work, BTW. Search the list for some of Rolf Brudeseth's mails, a link to his site is at www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ . The paragraph in the install manual about replacing the kernel on the rescue floppy might be of some assistance? -- http://Www.TruthAboutWar.org Chris Tillman - Linux Rox -
