On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 12:31:35PM -0400, De Served wrote: > Is it possible to netboot an old world PowerMac? I have a beige G3 that > is waiting for a Debian install. I want to experiment with running this > machine diskless. This, obviously, means netbooting the machine. Is it > possible?
Yes, it should be possible. It's just not very common these days. > I have spent several hours on Google looking for the answer to this > question. The Debian installation documentation says that yaboot is > required for a netboot, and that yaboot only works with new world Macs. > So the official Debian documentation says nay to netbooting old world > powermacs. It's not exactly the same, but NetBSD has some good documentation. http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/intro.macppc.html Some of the details are a little different, but the setup of the hardware and server will be the same. The main difference is just what you use as the boot file. There is a utility in the Linux kernel tree to package a kernel and initrd into an XCOFF file for direct use by an older OF version. I presume it still works for building a netboot image, but I haven't tried it myself. Just remember that Debian doesn't officially support this or build the XCOFF image for you, but if you're willing to do a little work on your own it should be fine. Brad Boyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
