[Debootloaders-miboot] install power mac 6500

[rob rob]

Hi piotr,
thanks for your post, or rather email. well I tried what you told me, but 
got some unexpected results.
I got the boot.img from:

http://people.debian.org/~wouter/d-i/powerpc-miboot/beta3/powerpc/floppy/

I wrote the disks as you said, and that works. apon checking them they gave 
me the same message as while writing them, namely:

1440+0 records in
1440+0 records out
Segmentation fault

Then i booted from the floppies, the option, on my german keyboard alt gr 
showed the debug, but I didn't need it, since I got to the installation 
menu. I got the negative penguin once again and after a few seconds the 
kernel started booting. I had to remove the disk with a pin to get the 
root.img disk in, which i also wrote with your method. Installation started 
alright, there are two rather wonky lines running through the picture. I 
wrote the net-driver.img disk also, and put it in when asked if I wanted to 
load more drivers. It loaded a whole bunch of drivers.
Anyway, I had problems with the network hardware recognition. I have a pci 
rtl839c network card, but it wasn't detected. When asked to choose which 
card I  had, i chose that one , but it didn't make a difference. I couldn't 
go on with the installation so I quit it.

here are my last relavent debug outputs which i get from alt F4

net/hw-detect.hotplug Detect hotpluggable network interface lo

ethdetect: FATAL: Could not load 
/lib/modules/2.6.16-2-powerpc-miboot/modules.dep : No such file or directory

INFO: Menu item 'netcfg' succeeded but requested to be left unconfigered

By the way, what do you boot with if not the floppies?
It would be great if you could help me further.
Rob



Hi Rob,

Based on your description, miboot started successfully, but wasn't
able to find or load some of its own components or the Linux kernel.

I haven't been using floppies for years, but remember that these
can cause lots of problems (especially on PCs).

First you should make sure that the floppy was written correctly.
For myself I've never used "conv=sync". Please try:
dd if=boot-floppy-hfs.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024; sync

To verify you should REMOVE the floppy from the drive (this it to
make sure that the cache is flushed). Then re-insert it and read it
with:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=my_floppy.img bs=1024
If the produced file is different the original, try different floppy.

If the floppy was written correctly, you should try to enable debug
output by pressing the Option key (usually it's located between
the Command (Apple) and Control keys) when miboot starts.
Timing may be important.

If you cannot get debug output I can build a floppy image with
debug option enabled permanently for you to try.

I will not be able to help you if you don't provide the debug output.


Regards,

Piotr