User:Tonyr/Journal/Sep07

06Sep07

Netboot Revisited
Vagrant got the common infrastructure ppc netboot set up, and we tested it on a G3 iMac in the Mac area. With a little coxing and head scratching we got it to find yaboot and yaboot.conf, but after that the process couldn't find any of the other boot files. I'll transcribe the boot trace as best I can here.

<in OpenFirmware>
> boot enet:0,ubuntu-installer\feisty-ppc\yaboot
CLIENT: 00039315657e 192.168.2.128
SERVER: 00163e6c369e 192.168.2.29
<and some other stuff that winked in before switching to...>

<yaboot monitor>
Transfer FILE: /boot.msg
FTP ERROR response 1 File not foundWelcome to yaboot version 1.3.13
Enter "help" to get some basic usage information
boot: <cr>
Please wait, loading kernel...

CLIENT: 00039315657e 192.168.2.128
SERVER: 00163e6c369e 192.168.2.29
Transfer FILE: /vmlinux
TFTP ERROR response 1 File not found
Can't read Elf  e_ident/e_type/e_machine info
boot:

Vagrant said he grabbed the boot files from the feisty-ppc distribution. That's a problem right there, since the initrd file there doesn't work for several reasons, and there are some simple pathname mods necessary in yaboot.conf. My mods are on the resident G3 tower station (in the MacBuild area) on the Desktop in a folder named ubuntu_ppc_netinstall, free for the taking. That doesn't address the issue of not finding the rest of the boot files. The solution to that is down the dhcp/tftp/boot-server path somewhere.

14Sep07

eMac Video Resolution
Feisty installs on an eMac just fine, but the Xorg configuration is inadequate. The default configuration results in no X display of any kind. The vertical refresh rate is wrong. Reconfiguring the xserver doesn't fix anything.

These posts

suggest another horz/vert rate modification, but also shows how to use programs gtf and read-edid to construct the appropriate Modelines for the supported display resolutions. That's the next thing to try.

Netboot Revisited
Vagrant installed my modified boot files on the netboot server (whatever that means). I tested netboot/install on an iMac, and it worked. Well, at least it started the install process. The iMac was defective (severe power and video issues) and died early on in the process. Let's just say it worked well enough. More testing to come.

15Sep07

eMac Video Resolution
Extracted from one of the links I mentioned yesterday, here are the mode lines that I insert into the Monitor section of xorg.conf to get the display to work.

Modeline "1024x768" 99.190000 1024 1072 1168 1376 768 769 772 810 +HSync +VSync
Modeline "1280x960" 122.240000 1280 1328 1424 1696 960 961 964 1002 +HSync +VSync

There is a HSync line modification, also. Here is the whole Monitor section:

Section "Monitor"
       Identifier      "iMac"
       Option          "DPMS"
       HorizSync       71-73
       VertRefresh     70-140
       Modeline "1024x768" 99.190000 1024 1072 1168 1376 768 769 772 810 +HSync +VSync
       Modeline "1280x960" 122.240000 1280 1328 1424 1696 960 961 964 1002 +HSync +VSync     
EndSection

I had mentioned earlier that the program gtf could be used to generate modelines. I tried that, and the mode lines that were generated for 1280x960 an 1024x768 were different tan the onesused here. The resulting displays were shifted severely to the left. The progrm read-edid might produce better results, but I haven't tried that.

Netboot Revisited
We used the netboot/install setup to do a complete install on another iMac today. Works well. The process still needs an automated clock setter early in the installation.

18Sep07

Ubuntu Gutsy
Vagrant suggested that MacBuild might want to start investigating the next Ubuntu release, 7.10 or Gutsy Gibbon. Currently, the alternate install iso image is "Oversized" (too big to fit on a 700Mb CD). It is not too big to fit on a 800Mb CD, but MacBuild doesn't have one. I thought it moight be worth a shot to try a netinstall, so I burned a netboot mini.iso image. The installation didn't work. I tried to do it with the Ubuntu desktop, the Xubuntu desktop, and no desktop. The Ubuntu desktop installation didn't complete, complaining about package problems. The Xubuntu desktop and No desktop installation finished, but the subsequent boot failed, bailing out to busybox. This experience leads me to believe that downloading any full CD install image would be useless at this point.

Debian Etch
I also burned a Debian Etch PPC netinstall image. Vagrant would like to pursue LTSP for PPC, and needs an Etch PPC box. I started that install this evening and will let it run overnight, since it might take several hours to download the installation packages from the Net.

19Sep07

iBook and Finnix
I tried to boot a Finnix CD on an 800MHz iBook so that I could run badblocks and memtest. It didn't work. I tried four different versions: 88.0, 89.0, 89.1, 89.2. All produced exactly the same result (to be described more fully later, but suffice it to say that the boot process starts nad hangs almost immediately). I tried the other obvious boot options (debug, finnix64, debug64) to no avail.

It turns out there are several other boot options and modifiers, which the Finnix web site calls Cheat Codes. The documentation is at http://www.finnix.org/Cheat_Codes. I'll give some of those a try.

Debian Etch
The installation that I started yesterday succeeded. Unfortunately, I installed it on an iMac, when what is really needed is a tower: Vagrant needs a machine with two ethernet controllers. I'm thinking one of the G3 450 MHz B&W towers. It will need another PCI ethernet controller.

20Sep07

Debian Etch
Successfully installed on a 450MHz B&W tower, Standard installation, no Desktop, as per Vagrant's suggestion.

Netboot files, DEC 21140 Ethernet chip
The network installation failed on a PowerMac G4/450MHz because that machine uses a DEC 21140 based Ehternet controller, and I had removed the tulip driver from initrd.img during the shrink process. Little did I know. The only thing for it is to re-do initrd.img, leaving in the tulip directory. See the next entry.

initrd.gz shrink/reformat script
I wrote a bash script that removes unnecessary drivers from the netboot version of initrd.gz that is distributed with Feisty, and also reincarnates the smaller version as initrd.img, a CRAMFS file. The script is in a section of Mac Build Scripts.

iBook and Finnix
None of the Finnix Cheat Codes had any effect on booting Finnix on the iBook in question. I have downloaded a copy of SystemRescueCD for PPC. It's labeled unstable, but I'll give it a try anyway.