[Debian-ppc64-devel] Dmesg of OpenPower 720 Express with kernel 2.6.12-1-powerpc64

[Sven Luther]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 09:14:16AM +0200, Harald Görl wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> >>>Huh ? Why does netbooting not work ? 
> >>
> >>This is the information i have (and what i can confirm by testing):
> >>
> >>For netbooting the machine with OpenFirmware/SMS you need *ONE* file to 
> >>boot from. It is not possible to boot a kernel with parameters (i.e. 
> >>"initrd=...") and give a initrd.gz as a second file!
> >
> >
> >Which is the case on all chrp or even all powerpc i know of, and which is 
> >why
> >you boot yaboot. Does yaboot not work on these boxes ? 
> 
> Sorry, perhaps i understand something completely wrong...
> 
> What i meant by "netbooting" is to boot from a bootpd/tftpd server 
> without any cdrom etc. Of course yaboot does work, but imho you need a 
> cdrom for it, isn't it? Or is yaboot able to boot vmlinux/initrd.gz 
> files over the network? (Which would be really cool!)

Well, an example maybe : earlier, i reinstalled my powerbook after changing
the harddisk. I put yaboot and a suitable yaboot.conf on my tftpserver, and
booted the machine with :

  boot enet:0,\yaboot

Which got an IP address from the DHCP server, and loaded yaboot from the tftp
server. since you are using real hardware and not apple crap, you can even go
away by doing :

  boot enet:0

and let the dhcp server give you the file.

Here is my yaboot.conf for example :

device=enet:
partition=0
timeout=50
init-message="Debian GNU/Linux Network boot"
default=sid

image=sarge/vmlinux
        label=sarge
	initrd=sarge/initrd.gz
	append=" video=radeonfb root=/dev/ram --"
	read-only

image=sid/vmlinux
        label=sid
	initrd=sid/initrd.gz
	append=" video=radeonfb root=/dev/ram --"
	read-only

image=sid/vmlinux
        label=expert
	initrd=sid/initrd.gz
	append=" DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low video=radeonfb root=/dev/ram --"
	read-only

image=exp/vmlinux
        label=exp
	initrd=exp/initrd.gz
	append=" video=radeonfb root=/dev/ram --"
	read-only

image=exp/vmlinux
        label=exp-expert
	initrd=exp/initrd.gz
	append=" DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low video=radeonfb root=/dev/ram --"
	read-only

> Using cdrom/yaboot is ok for one machine, but with partitioning it means 
> you have to switch the ide/cdrom hardware to the one virtual machine 
> which is installing at the moment. So booting a "zImage.initrd" with 
> tftp is more convenient.

Indeed. Try the above.

> >Also grub2 is supposed to boot just fine
> >too on those boxes, try it out.
> 
> Cool! I will try.

Well, it worked for pegasos and apples and on leighbb's dual power3 chrp
machine, so ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther