When you boot from the Jessie install CD, hit tab at the yaboot prompt. Should be a rescue option listed among others. So simply type rescue and hit Enter. Once booted into rescue mode, it'll feel like you are working through a normal install until you get to the step where you'll be asked what drive/partition you want to mount to make changes on. Your choice will vary depending on how you partitioned the drive during the install, but you'll want to mount the partition containing the root filesystem. If you aren't sure, you can always just start going through the list and selecting each one until it finds a valid root fs.
Once you have properly updated your /etc/yaboot.conf file and ran ybin (-v if you want output of the results) to apply the changes go ahead and exit rescue mode and reboot your system hopefully to a working login screen. I know, these steps were quite vague, but I don't have a system in front of me to provide more details from at the moment, but hopefully it at least puts you in the right direction. Also, you don't necessarily have to update your initrd symlink to point to your new initrd. Just provide the full name of the new initrd in your yaboot file. PPC systems can be a bit of pain to get up and running, but I personally enjoy that aspect of using them as it's good way to get an even stronger handle on how computers work and how things work specifically on Linux. Brock On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Steven Grunza <steven.gru...@gmail.com> wrote: > The install of jessie went ok. I haven't downloaded Wheezy yet. And yes, > the crash happened while updating /etc/yaboot.conf; I had just started > typing "ln -s " when nouveau took a serious dislike to something. > > My guess is that there is some way to boot the jessie CD in a rescue mode, > mount /boot, and fix the problem. I just haven't figured out how yet. > > I've been using various *nix since '95 when I started using Slackware > loaded from 3.5" floppies. I'm most comfortable in Fedora (my TabletPC > convertible runs Fedora 22) but I've had a few professional projects come > around for quoting that required Ubuntu or Debian so I'm trying to expand > my knowledge base a little. Of course using an old PowerPC G5 might not be > the best way of doing it (especially with the nVidia video card) but it's > what I've got... > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 9:36 PM, Brock Wittrock <brockwittr...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> So the initial install of Wheezy went okay? Do you mean the crash >> happened while updating your /etc/yaboot.conf file with the new initrd >> info? Can you boot into rescue mode off of the installer and mount your >> /boot and update things accordingly? >> >> If you'd like, we can try and work through the Jessie install again as >> well. I was hoping to reply sooner but am just getting to it now. >> >> >> Brock >> >> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 7:39 PM, Steven Grunza <steven.gru...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Killed the machine. :( >>> >>> While trying to change the symlinks in /boot to point to the new initrd >>> the nouveau driver crashed the OS causing a panic and reboot. >>> >>> Since the initrd file is not defined in /boot the machine is no longer >>> bootable. >>> >>> I've installed debian and ubuntu about five or six times each, trying >>> different flavors, etc. None work. >>> >>> I'm starting to understand while the machine was given away for free.... >>> >>> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 2:49 AM, Risto Suominen < >>> risto.suomi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> I don't know the answer, but I doubt it would help because the problem >>>> (those 64k pages) has been there for quite long. >>>> >>>> What went wrong with the 4.4.0-rc7-powerpc64 kernel? >>>> >>>> Risto >>>> >>> >>> >> >
