I tried to install the updated PowerPC CD for Debian 10/sid, located here: "https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/2019-01-25/";.
I tried installing on a PowerBook G3 Lombard and on a PowerBook G3 Series Wallstreet. Both systems previously had Debian 7.8 installed. Earlier, I had installed Debian 8.11.0 on the Lombard, but it didn't work well -- the network didn't come up, and the Apple driver for the internal disk had to be re-installed from the Mac OS 9.2.2 installation CD so a Mac OS 9.2.2 installation could be seen and booted (so there might be something about the yaboot installation in 8.11.0 that trashes the disk driver). At that time, I returned to Debian 7.8. So, here are my results today attempting to install Debian 10/sid: *** 1) Lombard (New World) *** As expected, the CD booted. The CD drive was detected, and everything seemed to be working. The base system installed, except for this: "No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources. You may try to continue without a kernel, and manually install your own kernel later. This is only recommended for experts, otherwise you will likely end up with a machine that doesn't boot. Continue without installing a kernel?" I knew I could copy a kernel (and modules) later from a backup installation, so I selected "Yes". Next, while "Configuring apt", I picked the defaults for a mirror: United States, deb.debian.org -- this failed. So I went back and tried ftp.us.debian.org, which also failed. I then tried entering the information manually: "deb.debian.org" with the archive mirror directory "/debian-ports/", which also failed. So I must not be using the correct mirror/directory. Ignoring the above error, the only software available for installation was "standard system utilities". So I selected that. Next error was "[!!] Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk. Unable to install GRUB in dummy Executing 'grub- install dummy' failed. This is a fatal error." I selected "Continue" then "Continue without boot loader". I'm not sure why it didn't try to install yaboot instead of grub, but I have a working AppleBoot partition from Debian 7.8 that should still work. System then rebooted; I booted into my backup partition and copied a 4.19.9 kernel and modules to /boot and /lib/modules. Trying to boot this kernel also failed, so I give up for now. Note: Since /lib is a symbolic link to /usr/lib, the default installation seems to require that everything be installed in "/"; i.e. no separate "/usr" (if /usr isn't mounted, then executables such as /bin/dash and /bin/bash fail looking for a shared library). *** 2) Wallstreet (Old World) *** As expected, the CD didn't boot, but BootX in Mac OS booted the vmlinux and initrd.gz from the powerpc directory on the CD, and the installation proceeded normally. The errors were the same as on the Lombard; booting back into Mac OS, this time I tried to boot one of Finn's known working kernels (vmlinux-4.20.0-00021-g57230c7d7f2a). This worked (and would likely have worked on the Lombard as well), though of course there wasn't much installed and nothing more could be installed without configuring the apt sources. Probably if the installation selected an appropriate kernel and if the mirror selection worked, the installation would succeed. Also, the installation of yaboot needs to work for New World systems, and installation of GRUB should not be attempted.
