Debian and Mac OS X - Page 6

thatch · 01-25-2003, 05:29 PM

Geez. That's too bad and very bizarre. I haven't had any problems with imlib at all. I wonder if a fink selfupdate-cvs followed by a fink update-all would fix you up or make it worse. Or maybe some rebuilding after some remove with the force depends options? Have you tried posting to the fink folks about it? I hope you don't have to dump OS X.

Question on the Debian thing... do you set up your partition for swap just after your root partition? And do you make it the same size as your physical ram? I have 64 MB and so I made mine that way. The KP's I have been getting are mostly about syncing the swapper or some such. And that makes me think I have something not right with my partition scheme. Sometimes I get a KP that says it can't mount the root fs too.

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 05:49 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch Geez. That's too bad and very bizarre. Have you tried posting to the fink folks about it? I hope you don't have to dump OS X.

I sent them a letter from the Gnome developer who solved the problem. I don't post on the Fink lists.

Quote:


	[i]Question on the Debian thing... do you set up your partition for swap just after your root partition? And do you make it the same size as your physical ram?

I usually double the amount of physical ram for the swap size on Linux. The same amount will also work, but the usual formula is double. Any more than that is superfluous, and anything more than 1,024 will never be used anyway. one usually never gos more than double what one has. 512 is a sweet spot though.

Quote:


	[i] I have 64 MB and so I made mine that way. The KP's I have been getting are mostly about syncing the swapper or some such. And that makes me think I have something not right with my partition scheme. Sometimes I get a KP that says it can't mount the root fs too.

Do you mean that bootx can't load, or are you getting a Linux kernel panic. If it's a linux kernel panic, you have the wrong kernel or the wrong driver fot your hardware. If it's a Mac kernel panic, you shouldn't be there in the first place.

A mac kernel will sure panic when confronted with an alien kernel!!!!.... but a Linux kernel won't unless there's a FS and/or a hardware issue. I hope you are not using the mac "+" FS for Linux. That won't work.

thatch · 01-25-2003, 06:17 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz I sent them a letter from the Gnome developer who solved the problem. I don't post on the Fink lists.

OIC. Well, I'm glad to hear the problem is solved then.

Quote:


	Do you mean that bootx can't load, or are you getting a Linux kernel panic. If it's a linux kernel panic, you have the wrong kernel or the wrong driver fot your hardware. If it's a Mac kernel panic, you shouldn't be there in the first place. A mac kernel will sure panic when confronted with an alien kernel!!!!.... but a Linux kernel won't unless there's a FS and/or a hardware issue. I hope you are not using the mac "+" FS for Linux. That won't work.

I'm getting linux KP's only:

Code:

Kernel panic: machine check
In swapper task - not syncing
Rebooting in 180 seconds..

I've never heard of the "+" FS for Linux. So, no worries there.

Is your swap usually right after your root partition? Example:

/dev/sdb3 = my /
/dev/sdb4 = my swap
/dev/sdb5 = my /usr
/dev/sdb6 = my /home
/dev/sdb7 = my /var
/dev/sdb8 = my /tmp

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 06:45 PM

Yes..... swap is OK...

Two questions: did you apply the "/chaos/control" patch?
and
Do you have a PPC601 CPU? [if so, it may have to be replaced with a 604, G3, or G4.....

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html

thatch · 01-25-2003, 06:54 PM

Glanz,

No, I didn't apply the patch. I have reservations about it because of my PCI video card which works fine in mac os but may not if I patch the open firmware.

I have a G3/500 upgrade in the 7500. It's quite fast. And upgrade cards are supported with Debian for my model.

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 07:26 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch Glanz, No, I didn't apply the patch. I have reservations about it because of my PCI video card which works fine in mac os but may not if I patch the open firmware. I have a G3/500 upgrade in the 7500. It's quite fast. And upgrade cards are supported with Debian for my model.

Then you have about the equivalent of a 2001 iBoob, and probably a real modem and not the non controllerless usb junk software modem they stick us with now.

Where's bootx on the HD?

thatch · 01-25-2003, 07:46 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz Then you have about the equivalent of a 2001 iBoob, and probably a real modem and not the non controllerless usb junk software modem they stick us with now. Where's bootx on the HD?

No modem in the 7500 when it came out. I had to use an external back in those days. Later, I went to a cable modem. Then I moved to where there was only DSL and that's where I'm at now.

BootX is installed on the mac's root partition in the appropriate places as per the instructions. There's an application, a extension, a folder to put your kernel into and some readme and faq files. But I just removed all of them from their requested locations because I'm about to do the install over again from scratch and they seemed to be interfering with the boot floppies. More KP's.

Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong".

If I get it installed again, this time when it comes to the end and they ask to make it boot into debian only, I will have no other choice but yes considering what I've been through and tried twice already without success. I just hope it works, otherwise I will not be able to boot into a secondary OS and will have to restore from backup to get back to where I am now.

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 07:52 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch If I get it installed again, this time when it comes to the end and they ask to make it boot into debian only, I will have no other choice but yes considering what I've been through and tried twice already without success. I just hope it works, otherwise I will not be able to boot into a secondary OS and will have to restore from backup to get back to where I am now.

No, that is not what I meany.... Do not choose to boot into Debian only. However, if you have a choice to use bootx as the default bootloader, say yes to that.

On a partitioned HD, one should not boot onto only one OS by default. The goal is to have a choice at booting time.

thatch · 01-25-2003, 08:05 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz No, that is not what I meany.... Do not choose to boot into Debian only. However, if you have a choice to use bootx as the default bootloader, say yes to that. On a partitioned HD, one should not boot onto only one OS by default. The goal is to have a choice at booting time.

But that's what I've done already twice before and it didn't work. And the installer doesn't mention anything about BootX specifically. It just says if you have an other means of booting, then choose not to make debian boot by default. Remember, I have two hard drives inside the 7500, one for the mac os and the other for debian. BootX is the only choice I have to be able to boot into one or the other. But it hasn't worked to say no to making debian boot right away from the end of the install. So, I have booted into the mac os at that point, twice, and was never able to boot fully into debian thereafter.

tjj · 01-25-2003, 08:45 PM

Seems like I made it, at least until I tried to install some more programs from the CD (only dl'ed the first).
But installation went smoothly, I'm glad to say. Unpacked the BootX zipped file, read the Read Me (yes, I did!), copied a few files into my minimal OS 8.1 folder. Then started the BootX application and off it went. Debian was successfully installed. (Just a swap and a main partition, may redo later)
Now I get asked whetr I want to boot into Linux or MacOS at start-up. (I had three options when the install was finished. To boot into Linux, or to make boot floppies, i think and then just to reboot. Chose the last, and now I have the choice of booting into linux or mac at startup)
But, alas when I tried to install some more programs I got a KP.
Well, look into tomorrow, it's getting pretty late over here. I'm off to bed

thatch · 01-25-2003, 08:55 PM

tjj, that's great! And it sounds so familiar too. But for me, when I chose to reboot and then booted back into the mac os, I was never able to fully boot into linux thereafter.

Now trying to install all over again for the third time, I can't even get the installer to boot up. Nothing but KP's before I even get to the second floppy. I can't imagine why that is since I've done it twice before from the exact same locked floppies. So, now I'm downloading all the files over to make floppies again. Sheesh!

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 09:31 PM

<<It just says if you have an other means of booting, then choose not to make debian boot by default. >>

I believe "another means of booting" may mean a floppy. But logic would dictate that that "other" should be bootx itself..... There's a problem of poorly phrased instructions here.

Anyway, I installed Debian too. I am coming to you from Galeon, and Windowmaker. I haven't installed everything yet, but I have KDE, Gnome/sawfish, Afterstep, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Xfce, FVWM, Enlightenment, IceWM, Galeon Mozilla, Konqueror, All the terminal apps, all the open source shells, Open Office, etc,etc.... Tomorrow I will install all the programming goodies.

I did not partition..., so I just boot directly. But as life would have it, my wife still has an updated OS X on her iBook. When I so much as glance its way though, she protects it with her aura.

thatch · 01-25-2003, 09:38 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz I believe "another means of booting" may mean a floppy. But logic would dictate that that "other" should be bootx itself..... There's a problem of poorly phrased instructions here.

Yes, it does mean a floppy or BootX or any other way, whatever that might be. Only thing is, for my rig, right near the end of the install is recommends to make a bootable floppy emergency disk, and then when you say yes to that, it says it's not yet supported for PowerPC. <shrug>

Glanz · 01-25-2003, 10:40 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch and then when you say yes to that, it says it's not yet supported for PowerPC. <shrug>

I am beginning to wonder if Joseph Heller, the author of "Catch 22" isn't secretly in charge of Debian development.

thatch · 01-26-2003, 12:12 AM

Okay, just to make this perfectly clear, here is what the installer says right near the end, as that's where I'm at now:

Select "Next" to configure your system to boot into Deban when powered on. The "Alternate" step will make a custom floppy for booting; this is a good option if you don't want to change how your system currently boots up (for instance, you have another operating system installed). Select "Alternate1" to simply reboot the system, which is appropriate if you have other means of booting, or have configured booting on your own.

So, considering that I have two hard drives, one with Mac OS 8.6 on it and the other now with Debian, I should choose "Alternate1" because as I mentioned before, if I were to select "Alternate" the installer would then tell me I can't make a bootable floppy for PowerPC. This is exactly as I have done it two previous times but then never was able to fully boot into Debian due to kernel panics.

So, here goes number three. After I get booted into Mac OS, I will configure the BootX utility there and hope for the best. The thing about that is that I must install a kernel into the system folder which will not be the same kernel as the one I just made with the installer. I wish I could put the installer made one there, but there's no way to access it from Mac OS. So, I use a kernel that is supplied with BootX that is supposed to work. That seems odd to me but there isn't any other way I've been told about with the instructions.

thatch · 01-26-2003, 01:34 AM

End result here again was KP the first time I tried to boot into Debian. But then after it boots into Mac OS and I shut it down, come back in ten minutes and try again, I get all the way to the installer's welcome screen and enter for <OK>, and then KP. I tried it one more time and got the nearly immediate and quite familiar, KP.

Unless there's a better kernel for my rig than the woody one I'm using which is the default in stable, I don't think this is going to work. OTOH, I got further along in the boot process that ever before and certainly almost there, but just one time. After that, I think the repeated KP's take their toll on the file systems, because eventually I can see in the output that it can't fix the file systems with fsck.

I'll be interested to see if tjj can get his powerbook going. It's a 603e processor which might work compared to my G3 upgrade with the default kernel on the 7500.

Glanz · 01-26-2003, 12:10 PM

We'll have to ask Tjj just where on the hard drive Linux is installed. I know bootx must replace the boot sector. I am sure the solution is as elusive as it is obvious. WHERE to find it...., that's the question.

BTW..... I am reinstalling OS X and Debian today... A 50/50 partition. Now I have to decide on the file system format for both so that I might facilitate exchanges.

PS: you mean you have two partitions, not two drives. Two physical drives are another basket of banananananananas altogether. I have a PC equiped with a removeable hard drive slot. I have four 30 GB hard disks, each with two Linux distros on board, except for one with FreeBSD 5.0 only. The main 40 GB drive in my PC has only Debian.

For my iBook I was considering a NetBSD install with OS X, but I decided on Debian because of the choice of apps and the facility of updating via APT.

AND.... what type of File system is Debian on again???? If it's HFS+, it won't work.

thatch · 01-26-2003, 02:19 PM

Glanz,

Yes, BootX is installed in the extensions folder of the system folder on the Mac OS drive and is called early in the boot process. When you start up, it comes up on screen before anything else. It then enables you to choose between the OS's. There are some arguments you can manually put in to help it along. You can save the preference of your choosing with it too, so that it always does what you want with every boot.

With the 50/50 partition setup you mention, if you want to exchange data between the two OS's, you will need an 'exchange partition' which must be HFS.

No, I don't mean two partitions. I mean two separate physical drives. I installed the second one myself, years ago, because the original was way too small. So, my 7500 has a master and slave drive, one each.

Debian is on an ext2 file system, not HFS or HFS+.

tjj · 01-26-2003, 03:29 PM

ok, here's what I did (I think. I did not, in spite of Glanz' advice, have it all layed out in my head; actually I didn't expect it to work out as smothly as it did).
I have one internal drive 2 GB. I partioned it with an Mac OS 8.1 cd into one small 300 Mb and the rest as free space (non-formatted).
I then expanded the BootX file located on the debian cd: Debian:PowerPC_woody/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/3.0.23-2002-05-21/powermac/BootX_1.2.2.sit
Following the instructions in the READ ME file

Quote:


	• BootX Itself BootX is made of a system extension and a control-panel like application. The extension goes into the "Extensions" folder of the system folder, it contains all the necessary code for booting linux at early startup time. The Application goes wherever you want, it's default location is the "Control Panels" of your system folder. • The Linux kernel BootX needs a plain uncompressed Linux kernel or a coff compressed kernel. Usually, you are expected to create a folder called "Linux Kernels" inside your system folder, and drop kernel files there. () () In practice, BootX supports several behaviours, some for historical reasons, others for ease of distributions makers: - The kernel can be named "vmlinux" and be placed at the root of the system folder, next to your MacOS "System" file. You can change the list of supported kernel names by changing the STR# resource in BootX. You can put whatever number of names you want here. - The same as above, but it can be placed next to BootX itself (application only) - A folder named "Linux Kernels" can be created and placed in the system folder. Any ELF32 or coff file in this folder will be recongnised as a possible kernel and added to BootX menu. - The same as above, but the folder can be placed next to BootX (application only) There is no support yet for loading the kernel from the ext2 partition. This is planed for a future release, but I really cannot say when this will happen... • The RamDisk (usually for booting your distribution installer) The installation ramdisk must be named ramdisk.image.gz and be placed in the system folder too or next to BootX App (but in this later case, only the application will be able to use it). When the ramdisk is available, BootX will enable the "Use RamDisk" checkbox. You can check this whenever you want to boot into the installer (typically the RedHat installer). Since 1.2, bootx also supports "vmlinux.coff" kernels with embedded ramdisk (xcoff images with an initrd section). The ramdisk file can still be separate when using standalone kernels, but can now be specified from the options dialog.

No restart was needed.
I then launched the BootX control panel and...booted into the installer.
The CD was in my cd-drive and automagically detected. It just went ahead and did it's thing.

When the installer was done I chose the option of booting as per alternate1 - simply reboot and ended op booting os 8 with a choice of changing this to linux at the startup screen.
Next time into linux I was asked to configure root account and user account. Welcome to debian!

Now I'm trying to get some more app's onto it and haven't yet figured out how to launch gnome desktop environment. I'm sort of stuck at the commandline. sudo doesn't work, have to su root, e.g. to run dselect.
Then, being late I gave up and wanted to shut down. Got a kp after entering shutdown -h now (as root). Just rebooted, still seems to work.

Note that this was all with the 1st CD only, never made a floppy.

thatch · 01-26-2003, 04:13 PM

tjj, that's great. You've got it successfully installed! I had to give it up on the 7500 but am now trying to install on my powerbook. It's got a 3 GB drive. The CD that I had made with the installer on it won't mount on the desktop, same as with the 7500. But the boot floppies will work and so I'm trying that now. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

01-25-2003, 08:45 PM	#110
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	Success! (Well..) Seems like I made it, at least until I tried to install some more programs from the CD (only dl'ed the first). But installation went smoothly, I'm glad to say. Unpacked the BootX zipped file, read the Read Me (yes, I did!), copied a few files into my minimal OS 8.1 folder. Then started the BootX application and off it went. Debian was successfully installed. (Just a swap and a main partition, may redo later) Now I get asked whetr I want to boot into Linux or MacOS at start-up. (I had three options when the install was finished. To boot into Linux, or to make boot floppies, i think and then just to reboot. Chose the last, and now I have the choice of booting into linux or mac at startup) But, alas when I tried to install some more programs I got a KP. Well, look into tomorrow, it's getting pretty late over here. I'm off to bed __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-25-2003, 05:29 PM	#101
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Geez. That's too bad and very bizarre. I haven't had any problems with imlib at all. I wonder if a fink selfupdate-cvs followed by a fink update-all would fix you up or make it worse. Or maybe some rebuilding after some remove with the force depends options? Have you tried posting to the fink folks about it? I hope you don't have to dump OS X. Question on the Debian thing... do you set up your partition for swap just after your root partition? And do you make it the same size as your physical ram? I have 64 MB and so I made mine that way. The KP's I have been getting are mostly about syncing the swapper or some such. And that makes me think I have something not right with my partition scheme. Sometimes I get a KP that says it can't mount the root fs too.

01-25-2003, 06:45 PM	#104
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	Yes..... swap is OK... Two questions: did you apply the "/chaos/control" patch? and Do you have a PPC601 CPU? [if so, it may have to be replaced with a 604, G3, or G4..... http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html

01-25-2003, 06:54 PM	#105
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Glanz, No, I didn't apply the patch. I have reservations about it because of my PCI video card which works fine in mac os but may not if I patch the open firmware. I have a G3/500 upgrade in the 7500. It's quite fast. And upgrade cards are supported with Debian for my model.

01-25-2003, 08:55 PM	#111
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	tjj, that's great! And it sounds so familiar too. But for me, when I chose to reboot and then booted back into the mac os, I was never able to fully boot into linux thereafter. Now trying to install all over again for the third time, I can't even get the installer to boot up. Nothing but KP's before I even get to the second floppy. I can't imagine why that is since I've done it twice before from the exact same locked floppies. So, now I'm downloading all the files over to make floppies again. Sheesh!

01-25-2003, 09:31 PM	#112
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	<<It just says if you have an other means of booting, then choose not to make debian boot by default. >> I believe "another means of booting" may mean a floppy. But logic would dictate that that "other" should be bootx itself..... There's a problem of poorly phrased instructions here. Anyway, I installed Debian too. I am coming to you from Galeon, and Windowmaker. I haven't installed everything yet, but I have KDE, Gnome/sawfish, Afterstep, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Xfce, FVWM, Enlightenment, IceWM, Galeon Mozilla, Konqueror, All the terminal apps, all the open source shells, Open Office, etc,etc.... Tomorrow I will install all the programming goodies. I did not partition..., so I just boot directly. But as life would have it, my wife still has an updated OS X on her iBook. When I so much as glance its way though, she protects it with her aura.

01-26-2003, 12:12 AM	#115
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Okay, just to make this perfectly clear, here is what the installer says right near the end, as that's where I'm at now: Select "Next" to configure your system to boot into Deban when powered on. The "Alternate" step will make a custom floppy for booting; this is a good option if you don't want to change how your system currently boots up (for instance, you have another operating system installed). Select "Alternate1" to simply reboot the system, which is appropriate if you have other means of booting, or have configured booting on your own. So, considering that I have two hard drives, one with Mac OS 8.6 on it and the other now with Debian, I should choose "Alternate1" because as I mentioned before, if I were to select "Alternate" the installer would then tell me I can't make a bootable floppy for PowerPC. This is exactly as I have done it two previous times but then never was able to fully boot into Debian due to kernel panics. So, here goes number three. After I get booted into Mac OS, I will configure the BootX utility there and hope for the best. The thing about that is that I must install a kernel into the system folder which will not be the same kernel as the one I just made with the installer. I wish I could put the installer made one there, but there's no way to access it from Mac OS. So, I use a kernel that is supplied with BootX that is supposed to work. That seems odd to me but there isn't any other way I've been told about with the instructions.

01-26-2003, 01:34 AM	#116
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	End result here again was KP the first time I tried to boot into Debian. But then after it boots into Mac OS and I shut it down, come back in ten minutes and try again, I get all the way to the installer's welcome screen and enter for <OK>, and then KP. I tried it one more time and got the nearly immediate and quite familiar, KP. Unless there's a better kernel for my rig than the woody one I'm using which is the default in stable, I don't think this is going to work. OTOH, I got further along in the boot process that ever before and certainly almost there, but just one time. After that, I think the repeated KP's take their toll on the file systems, because eventually I can see in the output that it can't fix the file systems with fsck. I'll be interested to see if tjj can get his powerbook going. It's a 603e processor which might work compared to my G3 upgrade with the default kernel on the 7500.

01-26-2003, 12:10 PM	#117
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	We'll have to ask Tjj just where on the hard drive Linux is installed. I know bootx must replace the boot sector. I am sure the solution is as elusive as it is obvious. WHERE to find it...., that's the question. BTW..... I am reinstalling OS X and Debian today... A 50/50 partition. Now I have to decide on the file system format for both so that I might facilitate exchanges. PS: you mean you have two partitions, not two drives. Two physical drives are another basket of banananananananas altogether. I have a PC equiped with a removeable hard drive slot. I have four 30 GB hard disks, each with two Linux distros on board, except for one with FreeBSD 5.0 only. The main 40 GB drive in my PC has only Debian. For my iBook I was considering a NetBSD install with OS X, but I decided on Debian because of the choice of apps and the facility of updating via APT. AND.... what type of File system is Debian on again???? If it's HFS+, it won't work.

01-26-2003, 02:19 PM	#118
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Glanz, Yes, BootX is installed in the extensions folder of the system folder on the Mac OS drive and is called early in the boot process. When you start up, it comes up on screen before anything else. It then enables you to choose between the OS's. There are some arguments you can manually put in to help it along. You can save the preference of your choosing with it too, so that it always does what you want with every boot. With the 50/50 partition setup you mention, if you want to exchange data between the two OS's, you will need an 'exchange partition' which must be HFS. No, I don't mean two partitions. I mean two separate physical drives. I installed the second one myself, years ago, because the original was way too small. So, my 7500 has a master and slave drive, one each. Debian is on an ext2 file system, not HFS or HFS+.

01-26-2003, 04:13 PM	#120
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	tjj, that's great. You've got it successfully installed! I had to give it up on the 7500 but am now trying to install on my powerbook. It's got a 3 GB drive. The CD that I had made with the installer on it won't mount on the desktop, same as with the 7500. But the boot floppies will work and so I'm trying that now. I'll let you all know how it turns out.