[Debian-ppc64-devel] Successful installation in an OpenPower 720 Express

[Sven Luther]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 03:32:48PM +0200, Harald Görl wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> >>On an OpenPower 720 the CD from Uni Augsburg worked fine.
> >
> >What about the official etch/sid debian-installer images ?
> 
> Hi Sven, Roberto, *.
> All of the debian-installer images (sarge/sid) i know don't have the 
> correct directory/file structure on the cdrom's filesystem to boot from 
> a IBM RS6k chrp machine. (Perhaps the NEWEST have it, then excuse me for 
> this posting!)

Yes, i know, which is why i asked about tests about the official netboot
images, where this should be no problem. 

The cd isos are anyway utterly broken, since they didn't get adapted to the
power[34][-smp] -> powerpc64 flavour name change.

Mmm, maybe i should fix that, will probably be more fun that trying to build
MOL modules with the utterly crap build system they have :/

> Beside all of the Debian directories and files the cd MUST have also:
> 
> 1. A directory /ppc containing a file bootinfo.txt. This file should 
> have the following content (or similar):
> 
> <chrp-boot>
> <description>Debian/GNU Linux Installation on OpenPower 720</description>
> <os-name>Debian/GNU Linux for OpenPower</os-name>
> <boot-script>boot &device;:\ppc\chrp\yaboot</boot-script>

This is the bootinfo file.

> 2. A directory /ppc/chrp/ and a "yaboot" executable at the place which 
> is given in bootinfo.txt. In this example in /ppc/chrp/. If you place 
> the yaboot executable in another dir, that is fine but you MUST have 
> this directory /ppc/chrp/ which could also be empty.

Well, i guess you could call it whatever you want, provided you use that name
in the bootinfo.txtx above ? 

> 3. A directory for yaboot configuration, which is /etc/ with the yaboot 
> config "yaboot.conf" in it, containing something like this:
> 
> init-message = "\nWelcome to Debian/GNU Linux on OpenPower\nPress <TAB> 
> Key for boot options.\n"
> timeout=600
> default=linux
> 
> image=/vmlinux
>     label=linux
>     initrd=/initrd.gz
>     read-only

That we have, no problem. It needs to go into /etc/yaboot.conf, not into
/install/yaboot.conf like it does right now ?

> That's it. And that's the way IBM RS6k machines (OpenFirmware/SMS) are 
> booting Linux, AIX or whatever.
> 
> To be complete here:
> To create the cd just create this directory structure in the filesystem 
> and then do:
> 
> 1. mkisofs -r -U -chrp-boot -o boot.iso Directory-Structure/

the important part here being the -U -chrp-boot part, i think the -chrpp-boot
part we already have, not sure about -U, am checking.

> 2. cdrecord -v dev=ATAPI:0,0 -dao boot.iso

Standard stuff,

So we need to add the bootinfo.txt file, and have the boot-device there point
to yaboot (probably <boot-script>boot &device;:\install\yaboot</boot-script>
should be just fine, copy the /install/yaboot.conf to /etc too, just in case,
and make sure we add the -U call to mkisofs.

Mmm, i indeed checked the debian-cd code, and -U is not in there. That said,
-U is :

       -U     Allows "Untranslated" filenames, completely violating the
	iso9660 standards described above. Forces on the -d, -l, -N,
	-allow-leading-dots, -relaxed-filenames, -allow-lowercase,
	-allow-multidot and -no-iso-translate flags. It allows more than one
	’.’ character in the filename, as well as mixed case filenames. 
	This is useful on HP-UX system, where the built-in CDFS filesystem
	does not  recognize  ANY  extensions.  Use with extreme caution.

Do we really need that ? And will it not break any other subarches we try it
on ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther