Netbooting Woody on an Imac

[Antoine Brenner <brenner@via.ecp.fr>]

Hi !

I just network installed a debian 3.0 (woody) on an Apple
Imac (G3 350MHz) with 128 MB of RAM, and here are some 
tips for doing it.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR DEVELOPPERS:
There is a problem with the bootfloppies if you want to
install yaboot. (the mac equivalent of lilo) :
mac-fdisk is not available until the system is installed
and the yabootconfig script does not work until the system
is rebooted.



Hardware Nota Bene: IMAC
antoine@imac:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu             : 740/750
temperature     : 50-52 C (uncalibrated)
clock           : 350MHz
revision        : 2.2 (pvr 0008 0202)
bogomips        : 697.95
machine         : PowerMac2,1
motherboard     : PowerMac2,1 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh
L2 cache        : 512K unified
memory          : 128MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld



Here a small howto for whoever might need it:


STEP ONE: CONFIGURE YOUR SERVER
Of course you need a dhcp (or bootp) server and also a
tftp server.
Here are the config files I used on the PC server (mandrake): 
For the tftp server, add in /etc/inetd.conf:
tftp    dgram   udp     wait    root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -r blksize -s /tftpboot

For the dhcp server, adapt the following /etc/dhcpd.conf:
---DHCPD.CONF BEGIN---
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
server-name "server";

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0{
    range 192.168.1.101 192.168.1.250;
    default-lease-time 86400;
    max-lease-time 172800;
    ddns-domainname "mylan";
    ddns-rev-domainname "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa";

    option domain-name "mylan";
    option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
    option routers 192.168.1.1;
    option netbios-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
    option netbios-node-type 8;
}

group {
    use-host-decl-names on;
    host imac {
        filename "yaboot";
        hardware ethernet 00:0A:27:7C:3E:C4;
        fixed-address 192.168.1.141;
    }
}
---DHCPD.CONF END---


STEP TWO: GET THE REQUIRED FILES FOR TFTPBOOT
Moreover, you need a readable /tftpboot with the 4 files:
linux.bin  root.bin  yaboot  yaboot.conf

Here is my /tftpboot/yaboot.conf:
---YABOOT.CONF BEGIN---
device=enet:
partition=0
timeout=50
init-message="Debian GNU/Linux Network boot"
default=linux

image=linux.bin
    label=linux
    initrd=root.bin
    initrd-size=8192
---YABOOT.CONF END---

I used the linux.bin from
debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/new-powermac/linux.bin
I used the root.bin as stated from the Installation manual 
section "11.2.3.1.3 TFTP boot images" from
debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/prep/images-1.44/root.bin
And I used the yaboot from 
debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/current/new-powermac/yaboot


STEP THREE: NETWORK BOOT THE IMAC
To network boot the Imac, I needed to press at the same time
at startup the following 4 keys:
(APPLE) + (ALT) + (o) + (f)
This opens an openfirmware prompt.
Then (finding the right syntax was a problem) I had to enter:
boot enet:,yaboot enet:/tftpboot

Hint: just net booting with 'n' at startup did not load the
yaboot, even with the right dhcpd.conf: I had to manually
enter the exact line above.


STEP FOUR: CONFIGURE YOUR BASIC DEBIAN SYSTEM
Here starts the problem with yaboot...
As there is no mac-fdisk on the root image, I used the
cfdisk program to create partitions, and then installed
debian woody. At the point when the installation program
wanted to install yaboot just before rebooting, it failed
(as expected)...
However, now I could find mac-fdisk on /target, copy
it in /sbin, umount /target and run /sbin/mac-fdisk
to partition again. This destroyed the fresh install,
but then I could restart the (network) installation 
from scratch again on the newly mac-fdisked partition.
However, yabootconfig failed again...
A quick look through the sources showed that 
yabootconfig does not expect / to be mounted in
/target (the first lines handle PATH_PREFIX, but
when trying to set INSTALL and OFBOOT, yabootconfig
does not find yaboot and ofboot... 
I add to change the sections with:
INSTALL=/target/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
OFBOOT="\nmagicboot=/target/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot"
in order for yabootconfig to run nicely.

However, it failed running yaboot because of missing
libraries. I had to create a /etc/ld.so.conf with
/target/lib
/target/usr/lib
and rerun ldconfig in order to sucessfully run
yaboot (hence yabootconfig)...


STEP FIVE: CONFIGURE THE REST OF YOUR DEBIAN SYSTEM
I found a nice XF86Config-4 for my Rage 128 RL on 
the debian powerpc mailing list from Chris Tillman
dated 04/30/2002.  Cool !
Other than this, all is just fine thanks to dselect 
and apt-get...

Regards,

Antoine Brenner
--
brenner at via dot ecp dot fr