Hi all --
I'm trying to install lenny (5.0.4 netinst) on a firewire drive
connected to a PowerBook G4. This is really a dry run to see how much
I can get working under Debian. (Right now I'm torn between sticking
to slow, bloated OS X 10.5, downgrading to OS X 10.4, or switching to
a leaner OS altogether... and Debian is my first choice, although this
will be the first time I've ever put Linux on non-x86 machine. It's
the eternal struggle between "everything just works, but I'm not
really in control" (OS X) and "most things work after I spend enough
time fiddling with them, but I am in control" (Linux).)
For partitioning, I let debian-installer do "guided partitioning" of
the whole 40 GB disk. Then I manually tweaked that so that lenny only
gets a 10 GB partition, because I also want to backup the existing OS
X install onto this same disk. But I left the boot partition that d-i
created alone.
The installation goes fine until it tries to install yaboot. That fails with
Failed to install boot loader
The installation of the yaboot boot loader failed.
Check /var/log/syslog or see virtual console 4 for the details.
Warning: your system may be unbootable!
At this point I have a couple of questions.
1) can I install yaboot on a firewire disk? I know OS X itself will
boot off this disk, since I have done it successfully. So I'm
assuming yaboot+linux can also boot off of it.
2) how do I get to VC 4? i.e. what is the equivalent of Alt-F4 on a
Mac running Linux? I've tried Fn-F4, Ctrl-F4, Option-F4, and
Command-F4. It looks like the keystrokes go to debian-installer
rather than being intercepted by the kernel.
3) the first time I tried this (yesterday), I used "Execute a shell"
in hopes of looking in /var/log/syslog... but the console keymapping
was totally screwed up. All I could do was powerdown and give up in
frustration. I just retried the installation today with the same
yaboot error, and now (thankfully) I can use the shell. The only
difference between the two attempts is that yesterday I partitioned
manually, and today I used guided partition with manual adjustments.
Any idea what might have gone wrong with my console keymap yesterday?
4) ah-ha! now that I can read syslog, I think I've found the yaboot problem:
yaboot-installer: mkofboot: Unable to find OpenFirmware path for
boot=/dev/sda2
yaboot-installer: mkofboot: Please add ofboot=<path> where <path>
is the OpenFirmware path to /dev/sda2 to /etc/yaboot.conf
Well that sounds straightforward... /dev/sda is my firewire disk
(the internal disk is /dev/hda -- this Mac is pre-SATA). So now I
need to figure out how to say "/dev/sda2" in OpenFirmware's syntax.
I'll go off and do the obvious google'ing, but any hints are welcome.
Thanks --
Greg
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