On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 08:27:29PM -0800, shyamal wrote: > > "Sven" == Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> > >> I'd be happy to help where I can if something needs testing on > >> a dual G5. > > Sven> [ ...lots of good advice which is well taken by me... ] > > Sven> Also, once we get ppc64 kernels rolling, it would be nice to > Sven> get them tested too and so on, do you know how to build a > Sven> kernel ? > > Yes, I can build kernels. However right now I don't have a system on > which I can do this which is really frustrating (my old AMD K7 based > workhorse had a motherboard failure, the dual G5 is the replacement as > a gift from my wife <grin>). > > I got a Gentoo image (2.6.9 smp) that boots the G5 nicely. I tried to > use it to get debootstrap or d-i going but I'm not there yet. > > Is there a way to use a rescue kernel (in this case the Gentoo kernel > booted from a Mac HD using OpenFirmware) to start the d-i on the Sarge > CD? (My guess is not, but then I'm not very familiar with internals of > d-i).
No, the first order of business is to try d-i again, and fill a installation report about it. Can you please remember me your state of things, i don't seem to have your older email handy, and lost a bit of the context of this in pre-christmas crazyness and lot of work which pilled on me at the last minute, sorry. If the kernel issue is fixed, and d-i is working, then everything is fine, no ? Can you provide me info on the exact model that this concerns ? > <babble> > > I even started an attempt to rebuild the Gentoo and/or Debian initrd > on my old i686 machine so I could boot and run d-i or debootstrap on the > G5. Imagine the frustration: the Debian ppcinitrd is big endian, and > my little endian i686 kernel cannot loop mount it!(?). The Gentoo > initrd is ext2, which I can take apart and rebuild on the 686 machine, > but since I can't look into the debian-installer initrd I don't know > what changes I need to make :-) This i686 laptop is too slow and > constrained for me to install a cross compilation toolchain even if I > wanted to. > > At any rate, I'm starting to enjoy the powerpc experience. In the five > days since I got this machine I've got a little grip on Yaboot and > OpenFirmware, and I think I see how I might use my wife's G4 (on which > I am *prohibited* from installing Linux :-) to install on the G5 in > target disk mode. Yes, indeed, that should be possible. Remember that OS X is unix, and thus you could compile debootstrap from source, and use that to install over target disk. Should work fine, but you still would need a working kernel. Let me have a look at your kernel bug report. Christoph Hellwig may also help, since he runs a G5 box too. > Tomorrow is another day..... Yeah, and i still have not finished my christmas shopping, and with my new born son, it will be a hell to find time to go shopping, oh hell ... Friendly, Sven Luther
