Subject: Re: Installation problem...
From: philippe tapon (ptapon@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Nov 09 2000 - 18:44:06 MST
"Pablo E. Fernandez L." wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> I have read your help page at www.linuxnewbie.org.
> What about if I dont have a cd burner to install Linux
> Yellowdog from a CD, what about if it resides on a
> local hard drive? I have found pretty tricky to
> install it, can you give some hints or indications?
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> Regards
>
> Pablo
hi
hm, good question. I'm certain I don't have foolproof answers. I
remember that in the installation (when I booted from the CD) it
prompted me with the question, "where are you installing from?" and it
offers you several choices, among then, the CD, and a hard drive image.
Seems you have two tasks----
1. boot into the linux installer
2. give the installer the location of your YDL image
Booting into the linux installer from a hard drive image sounds like
it's tough (for someone who's just starting out with linux).
Without more details it's hard to tell you what to do. In a general
way--
(a) I'm assuming you're using an iMac DV SE. In which case you'll use
Yaboot and don't need BootX.
(b) I can't tell from your short eMail whether your YDL image is on the
same partition as the MacOS or on a different partition. If it's on a
different partition, you *may* be able to use the Startup Disk control
panel (of the MacOS) to set that partition as the startup. If it does,
see below. Chances are though it won't recognize the YDL image as
containing a valid System Folder.
(c) If that's the case, you have to marry, to to speak, a MacOS system
folder and the YDL Install directory. I would put the items in the YDL
install directory into a valid System folder. You will especially need
Yaboot, Yaboot.conf, bootscript, vmlinux, the ramdisk, and YellowDog_ROM
(everything except BootX, see above). These should sit at the bottom of
the system folder, not be enclosed by the install directory.
(d) At that point that System Folder is capable of loading MacOS or of
loading linux, provided it has the right instructions. To give you a
feeling for the sequence of events, it goes somethng like this: (i) the
Mac turns on; the machine checks itself out and goes "boing" if it's ok;
this is where the YellowDog _ROM tricks the machine (I think!) -> (ii)
Open Firmware gets loaded into the memory and follows whatever
instructions it has (this is where the setenv command, which you set
before the boot, gets executed) -> (iii) if OpenFirmware means to boot
Mac, it does so; otherwise it follows the setenv command and goes to the
file marked bootscript -> (iv) bootscript loads Yaboot -> (v) Yaboot
checks Yaboot.conf -> (vi) Yaboot.conf tells Yaboot which vmlinux to
load -> (vii) vmlinux gives you access to the linux installer.
so much for the generalities. In a practical way, you have to make sure
each link in the chain is unbroken. (i) YellowDog_ROM should be in the
right place, i.e. lying in the bottom of the system folder. (ii) You
will have to set the setenv command in Open Firmware--my article
explained that, and you shouould do that last, right before the final
boot into linux. (iii) you don't have to worry about configuring
bootscript. (iv) Yaboot doesn't need screwing with. (v) Yaboot.conf is
the trickiest part. You have to know what partition numbers your
partitions have--hda8, hda9, whatever. If you've partitioned your disk
already you know what these are. if you haven't partitioned your disk,
linux will give you a chance to do so. Check the YellowDog errata on
the support page; they confirm that you ned four backslashes \\\\ and
not two. (vi) you only have one kernel, so this link should not require
tweaking--the tweaking is all in Yaboot.conf. (vii) vmlinux will load
the install program. (I hope.)
I'm forwarding this answer to the YellowDog list. I have a feeling I
may have goofed up a detail or two (or three or four) and hope they'll
catch my errors. I'm also including, inline, a recent (extremely
informative) eMail to the list.
Good luck.
peace
philippe
On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, Stefan Jeglinski wrote:
>
> 1. YDL updates says mistakes were made, there should be 4 slashes in
> front of vmlinux, not two, in yaboot.conf. Does this 4-slash rule
> also apply to the procedure to set OF to select either yaboot or
> bootscript (setenv blah blah blah)? And does it also apply to the
> bootscript text?
No. The yaboot.conf changes are just that -- yaboot.conf changes.
"\\\\" is necessary to get yaboot to use "\\".
Open Firmware (and the yaboot command line) uses "\\". The bootscript,
which is an Open Firmware script, is of course the same.
Finally, if there were problems in OF or the bootscript I think we
probably would have mentioned that along with the yaboot.conf fix.
> 2. All references to the hard drive in the dox I can find use the
> terminology "hd". But there have been lots of references in archives
> to "ultra0" and even "ultra1". Can I get a definitive statement of
> which to use and when and why?
This has been answered, but to put all the answers in one email:
"hd" and "ultra0" are equivalent and mean the master IDE drive.
"ultra1" means the slave IDE drive.
> 3. In yaboot.conf, "hd:," (that's hd colon comma, no space)
> supposedly refers to "the first HFS partition of the first IDE hard
> drive."
More accurately it refers to the first non-driver partition on your
master IDE drive, but that's almost always of type "Apple_HFS".
> Apparently if I'm not on the first partition, I should be
> putting the partition number in thusly: "hd:N," (that's hd colon
> partition# comma, no space). True?
Yes. However the partition on which the Mac OS is installed is almost
always the first non-driver partition. So if you have your yaboot binary
etc on that partition, you do not need to use "N".
> 4. w.r.t. question 3, both vmlinux and yaboot are on the Mac boot
> partition (in the System Folder), so N should always refer to that
> Mac boot partition alone, no?
That's fine... but as I mentioned you generally don't need to supply a
value for "N" at all in this case.
> 5. w.r.t. question 4, where does the partition for the root device
> (/dev/hdXX) come in? Surely it must appear somewhere.
Nope. The kernel is able to detect your root partition automatically if
you do not specify one. It only considers partitions of type
"Apple_UNIX_SVR2" when doing this check.
You can of course specify one if you have multiple Linux installations
(otherwise the kernel would automatically detect and boot the first one
only).
> 6. In the bootscript, consider the line:
>
> " Booting Yaboot ..." cr " boot hd:,\\yaboot.tbxi" eval
>
> Pending other answers, this line implies that the yaboot binary
> must be named exactly yaboot.tbxi, no?
Correct. However, those directions are old. In particular, the yaboot
distributed on the CD as "yaboot.tbxi" is yaboot 0.5. You probably
should
upgrade (and so take out the ".tbxi" part).
> That is, does the tbxi refer
> only to the file type or does it reflect the exact name of the file?
> If the former, I guess I need to make sure the file type is tbxi,
> using FileBuddy for example? See also question 7.
You do not need to do this; you have specified the file name, which is
completely independent of the file type.
> 7. In the bootscript, consider the line:
>
> " Booting Mac OS ..." cr " boot hd:,\\:tbxi" eval
>
> Here, the tbxi refers strictly to file type, no? The real target
> is the ROM, no? ("Mac OS ROM" has type tbxi, but tbxi does not appear
> in the name of the ROM file).
Yes and yes.
> And since there have been lots of
> scattered OFFICIAL blunders (2 slashes instead of 4, or the infamous
> "txbi" instead of "tbxi"), is it true that there is -no- colon before
> yaboot.tbxi (booting to Linux), but there -is- a colon before tbxi
> (booting to MacOS)?
The colon indicates file type. I think you already figured that part out
though. How else would Open Firmware know not to boot a file called
"tbxi"?
-Hollis
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