Please don’t ask me any support questions, my RS/6000s have gone the way of all scrap metal a long time ago.
First we need to prepare the boot disks. We need the image files rescue.bin and root.bin from the folder /dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/chrp/images-1.44/. The included kernel image linux.bin won’t work on our machine, so we replace it with a custom kernel 2.4.17-pre2-ben0. All necessary drivers are compiled into this one. However, there are no SCSI CD-ROM drivers. If required, it should be possible to extract them from the modules and load them from a floppy.
Connect the terminal to the serial port. Set your terminal program to 9600-8N1. Press 0 on console when prompted. Then press 8 after the word “Keyboard” appears on screen to go directly to the “OK-Prompt”.
I however borrowed a PCI graphics board from a PowerMac G4-350 to run the installation in graphical mode. Choose the graphical console by pressing 2 when prompted, then as soon as the keyboard icon is shown press F8 to go directly to the OpenFirmware prompt.
Enter this (graphical mode):
0 > boot floppy:,\linux.bin root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1
or, for serial console:
0 > boot floppy:,\linux.bin root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 console=ttyS0
Insert root floppy when prompted. The Debian installation should start as normal. We need to make a “PPC PReP Boot” partition of 4 MB. Example partition table:
sda1 Boot Primary PPC PReP Boot 4 sda2 Primary Linux 2000 / sda5 Logical Swap 2048 Swap sda6 Logical Linux 1000 /var sda7 Logical Linux 13000 /home
Now configure the network using the installation menu. The installation script would go into a loop after this, so we go on manually for a moment. After formatting and mounting the partitions, open a shell:
# cd /target/tmp # wget http://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/base-images- current/basedebs.tar # exit
Back in the installation script go to “Install Base System” and choose “Already mounted partition”, enter /target/tmp. Now reboot with the hard disk for root partition:
0 > boot floppy:,\linux.bin root=/dev/sda2
or
0 > boot floppy:,\linux.bin root=/dev/sda2 console=ttyS0
Install as normal until the login prompt appears.
Now we replace the kernel with a custom kernel with modules. Download these three files, vmlinux, modules-...tar.gz and System.map (e.g. to /root/) and copy/decompress them:
# cd / # cp /root/vmlinux . # cp /root/System.map . # cd /lib/modules # tar xzf /root/modules-2.4.25-ben1.tar.gz
The kernel is based on Benjamin Herrenschmidt’s kernel sources.
Edit the configuration file for the bootloader yaboot, /etc/yaboot.conf:
boot=/dev/sda1 fstype=raw partition=2 root=/dev/sda2 timeout=30 install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot nonvram image=/vmlinux label=linux read-only
Execute mkofboot to install the bootloader:
# mkofboot -v
If you want to log in via serial console, uncomment this line in /etc/inittab:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
Now you can log in via serial console or ssh after reboot.
Copyright 2004 by Jens Kutilek.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
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