Re: [gentoo-ppc-user] Booting Gentoo 2006.1 on an iMac

[Nick S-A]

On Sep 10, 2006, at 11:37 AM, Charles Trois wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am having trouble while installing 2006.1 on my iMac. I have made
> other installations before, but never had this problem.
> I am using the Universal ppc disk, and I have followed strictly all
> the steps in the 2006.1 handbook. I have not made any modules,
> everything is in the kernel.
>
> What happens is that, on the final reboot, I see 10 or 15 lines of
> text (is that the Open Firmware part?) that disappear immediately.

I had a nice message written but my macbook had a Random Shut Down,  
so here is the condensed version:
Do you see the second stage bootloader of yaboot after you press L  
for GNU/Linux? if so, try hitting tab and appending video=ofonly to  
the kernel you want to boot that appears. If those 10-15 lines are  
the second stage bootloader, which it sounds like they are, you can  
add timeout= to your yaboot.conf as detailed on its guide (I think  
that it still resides on www.penguinppc.org) so that you have more  
time to add in that video=ofonly, or just add in the line
append="video=ofonly"
after your kernel configuration in the yaboot.conf.
and make sure that you have your root= correct.
finally, you could try init=/bin/sh or the like to try to get into an  
emergency shell, then blind type setup to get your ethernet modules  
installed, but that is probably not worth the effort.
Also, you might be trying to access a ramdisk without knowing it - be  
sure to turn off all initrd in yaboot, and make sure that root= is  
right (there is some strange config with initrd where root is /dev/ 
ramX and there is a real_root or the like which tells where you are  
supposed to eventually end up after loading appropriate modules).

> Then there is nothing, and I have to cut the power to go on.
>

Did you try to chroot into your finished install from the liveCD  
after it finished to make sure everything is OK? You could also  
reinstall yaboot and see if that helps, or even just run ybin -v.

> I have also made a more complete version of yaboot.conf with macos,
> macosx, etc. Then the bootloader shows these options (ignores
> enablecdboot and enableofboot, though). Typing x for macosx
> starts it normally, but l for linux fails as described above.
>

I don't know why enablecdboot and enableofboot are not recognised -  
did you make sure you put them in the beginning of the yaboot.conf  
before listing all your kernel versions?

I would say that the problem is most likely that there are video  
framebuffer problems, and since you cannot connect to the internet or  
a local subnet to ping/SSH into the computer, it is difficult to  
debug. I would try adding the video=ofonly, or some other video=  
(depending on your iMac revision, you could have an ATI Rage, ATI  
Radeon, NVidia, etc) that should be detailed in the handbook.

hope that helps!
nick


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