Debian and Mac OS X - Page 7

tjj · 01-26-2003, 04:20 PM

yeah, just can't seem to get out of that %&%#") commandline. where'd you get that image that didn't work?

Seems like a I've got a working installation, but presently I'm unable to do anything with it

Good luck, and let me know if you need any specifics.

How do I launch th e gnome desktop environ ment?

thatch · 01-26-2003, 04:36 PM

tjj, have you looked at the online manual located at http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/ ? That's where I got the links to the ISO CD image on one of the Debian mirrors. It's basically the same address as you had on your CD only with www.debian.org at the front. And that's where you find all the specifics on the installation and more for PowerPC's. You'd be about at chapter 9 or 10 now. There are 12 chapters total. The info on installing packages is a couple of chapters before all that. Have a look, it's all there. Okay, I just checked for you and it's on chapter 8 where you install and configure apt, 8.11.

tjj · 01-26-2003, 04:52 PM

hmrpph
Yes I'm reading it. Something seems to be wrong with my http access. Have to study some it seems..
When I try to configure <<apt-setup>> I end up with an :
<<Oops: Exception in kernel mode, sig 4....and then a lot more I don't understand>>

tjj · 01-26-2003, 04:56 PM

Ouch, tried pinging my router and got a KP....Will reboot in 180 secs...Damn!

thatch · 01-26-2003, 04:57 PM

tjj, I don't know what to say there on that. Perhaps go back a few chapters and find the correct info. You should have been following that all along from the beginning to get it all right. I know it's very long and sometimes a bit confusing. That's what I've been going through the last few days. But it's starting to make more sense to me now. Keep at it and I think you'll get it.

tjj · 01-26-2003, 05:10 PM

Well,, maybe you're right. I just tried another mirror and now at least something is coming down. I'll play around with the manual some more tomorrow...
Thanks for the encouragement!

Glanz · 01-26-2003, 09:17 PM

Tjj.... do you have XFree configured? If so yao may have to do a "startx" the first time as in FreeBSD.... I didn't with my deb install because I configured XFree during the installation. Without XFree86, YOU ARE STUCK IN COMMAND LINE MODE.

Glanz · 01-26-2003, 09:27 PM

If you read this, you'll see why there's no prob installing Debian on iBooks.....

thatch · 01-26-2003, 09:54 PM

Hey Glanz, I'm currently installing on my powerbook. I was able to start the installation system from my floppies. I used a net install which started nicely and began downloading files, unlike the 7500 net install attempts, but then it came to an error about not being able to get bash. A subsequent try came back with another error, can't remember but it wasn't bash this time, and now every time I try to get to the base system files, it claims the server was unavailable or contained no release file. Well, that happened with the 7500 every time.

And I can get into the shell on the powerbook whereas the 7500 would kernel panic as soon as I typed anything into the shell. Now, I see I have wget from the shell at /usr/bin. But I don't have wget on my main machine and don't know the command line options and flags for it. I thought maybe I could use wget to get the file on the machine and then point the installer towards it. Would it be something like:

wget url_path_to_file destination/directory ???

Okay, wait a minute, I see usage on it now. No man pages yet though on the small rescue disk that the installer runs from. Would it be:

wget -P /usr http://www.debian.org/debian/dists/w...t/basedebs.tar

...to put it into my /usr directory?

Never mind. I tried it and it came back with a 404 file not found error, even though I can go there on my G4 and see the file or download it if I wanted to. It's the bugginess of this damn installer. I don't know what to do but abort the installation once again.

Glanz · 01-26-2003, 10:19 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by thatch Now, I see I have wget from the shell at /usr/bin. But I don't have wget on my main machine and don't know the command line options and flags for it. I thought maybe I could use wget to get the file on the machine and then point the installer towards it. Would it be something like: wget url_path_to_file destination/directory ???

You should have APT installed also.... Remember all this works like Fink..... The "sources" list {which is like the Fink "/sw/etc/fink.conf"} is in "/etc/apt/sources.list. Now check that list out. If it's there, you can add Debian PPC mirrors...to it. You could possibly use APT to finish an install.

Maybe the server is really down.
Have you tried
"su root"
"curl http (or ftp)://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/" ?

WGET URL syntax is as follows:::
URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the URL syntax as per RFC1738. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote optional parts):

http://host[

ort]/directory/file LOL LOL where you see the smiles there's a "[" followed by a ":" and the "p" in "port" (u won't need that though.
ftp://host[

ort]/directory/file

You can also encode your username and password within a URL:

ftp://user

assword@host/path
http://user

assword@host/path

Either user or password, or both, may be left out. If you leave out either the HTTP username or password, no authentication will be sent. If you leave out the FTP username, `anonymous' will be used. If you leave out the FTP password, your email address will be supplied as a default password.(1)

You can encode unsafe characters in a URL as `%xy', xy being the hexadecimal representation of the character's ASCII value. Some common unsafe characters include `%' (quoted as `%25'), `:' (quoted as `%3A'), and `@' (quoted as `%40'). Refer to RFC1738 for a comprehensive list of unsafe characters.

Wget also supports the type feature for FTP URLs. By default, FTP documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type `i'), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another useful mode is the `a' (ASCII) mode, which converts the line delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful for text files. Here is an example:

ftp://host/directory/file;type=a

Two alternative variants of URL specification are also supported, because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their wide-spreadedness.

FTP-only syntax (supported by NcFTP):

host:/dir/file

thatch · 01-26-2003, 10:30 PM

Glanz, that's a lot of great information but only the wget was the part I needed. I'm in the middle of another install and don't want to scrap another drives hard work here. Sorry, but this is making me a bit grumpy.

Apt is not on the installer's rescue disk files. It's too soon for that yet. I'm trying to get the base system files installed. But I'm stuck because of the extremely buggy nature of this installer.

Glanz · 01-26-2003, 10:37 PM

ssOOOOKKKKK Thatch

Whenever I mention the words "FreeBSD", my cat hides. I ALWAYS go through what you are going through on a FreeBSD install.

thatch · 01-26-2003, 10:57 PM

The installer's shell is ash, a bourne again clone. Now, I would think that to change directories, you would use cd. But there isn't a cd command. I need to change directories and make directories that are specific to the path that the installer would look for to install the basedebs.tar. But the darn thing won't accept a cd command or, more recently, I tried to make the directory, "dists", but it came back with a, "Cannot create directory `/usr/debian/dists': Input/output error". Buggy!

Okay, now I see with a pwd command that it indeed is changing directories. But it still won't let me make more than the 'debian' directory. The attempt for 'dists' and 'main' come back with the input/output error. I need to make a specific directory path. A simple thing really.

/target/usr/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/base-images-current/

tjj · 01-27-2003, 05:37 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by Glanz Tjj.... do you have XFree configured? If so yao may have to do a "startx" the first time as in FreeBSD.... I didn't with my deb install because I configured XFree during the installation. Without XFree86, YOU ARE STUCK IN COMMAND LINE MODE.

That's probably it. I'm not at the box right now.
But kept getting errors running apt-setup (as root), didn't understand much of the error messages. Anyways, I messed around and couldn't get to accept that the *.deb packages were on the CD. Finally, adding different mirrors, dl was successfull, and unpacking went on during the night, with occasional errors. Seemed to be finished this morning, but I still can't get to shut down gracefully. Ran shutdown -h now, and at least no KP, killed a lot of processes but wouldn't quit.
I'll check tonight what was actually installed, and try the startx command.
Perhaps I should reformat and do it all again; I'm not sure I got all of the hardware configuring right...
Once again, thanks for the feed-back.

thatch, looking forward to hear about your error messages

, hoping of course that you don't get any..

Glanz,
<<..I ALWAYS go through what you are going through....>>
jeez, man, once running it's gotta be GOOD, since you keep doing it!

Glanz · 01-27-2003, 07:34 AM

Quote:


	Originally posted by tjj Glanz, <<..I ALWAYS go through what you are going through....>> jeez, man, once running it's gotta be GOOD, since you keep doing it!

I've installed FreeBSD or Debian on a lot of portables and Desktops over the years.

BTW, Debian usually does not shut down for you.... It just shuts down all processes and then lets you know IT IS SAFE to SHUT DOWN. In other words, it tells you it's OK to hit the power button.

Later, when you are running XFree, you will "shut down" via a graphical interface, yet, only the processes will be shut down. You will probably have to hit the button yourself. This is rather normal. Usually only the "semi commercial" versions of Debian such as Libranet, etc hit the button for the user.

tjj · 01-27-2003, 04:17 PM

hmm, still stuck in the commandline. The x11 IS installed, and it does try to launch, but hits a fatal error. Same when startx is run at the cl.
I think I may have installed the wrong video drivers at some point during the initial installation. The error is something about no devices detected(!?) after loading ATI driver. Then fatal error: no screens found. But, I don't think the video card is ATI, wonder how it got there.
Is it possible to overwrite/reinstall video drivers?
According to the 3400 spec's it should be <<Video:HDI-15>>, but I can't seem to find anything like that when going into the installer again. Alas!

btw, I can shutdown gracefully now. Powers off nicely. At least that's working

Glanz · 01-27-2003, 05:34 PM

To reconfigure the X server there are two main options: you may try the command "xf86cfg"...or use the following command::
"dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86"... I believe that from what you described here, the second option is called for.......

tjj · 01-27-2003, 05:47 PM

Thanks Glanz,
I already tried the <<"dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86">>, no luck. The xf86cfg caught a fatal error...
Looks like I have to start all over. Now, i seem to remember choosing ati as the driver, because that's resembled something I had seen before. That was just on the G3 I believe...
Maybe something better turns up this time.

Edit:
The "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" runs without giving any options, but startx still fails after loading the ati driver and finding no screen.
The xf86cfg seems to choke because

Quote:


	module /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/vga_drv.o is unresolved

Perhaps I should try to remove the ati_dri.o and atimisc_drv.o files in that directory?

Glanz · 01-27-2003, 06:29 PM

This means you do not have the drivers...OR...you doand they are the wrong ones for the hardware you have. You can edit any X-file you wish. You can also edit the "dev" files, but you must correctly identify your stuff.

thatch · 01-28-2003, 02:05 AM

I haven't had time for this since Sunday, but I went through another install. This time it went pretty flawlessly except for the basedebs.tar file which for some reason will not go with a net install. And trying to get it on a linux partition to install from there wouldn't work. But I found, as I had remembered from my attempts with the 7500, that I could put basedebs.tar on the Mac OS partition in the exact path of directories and point the installer towards it; a hard drive install. So, part floppy, part net install and part hard drive install.

Got to the end of that and rebooted. Then I set up the BootX program, booted into the new system and didn't get too far along, about where the root drive is mounted read only and then it says it's freeing unused kernel memory: 184k init 28k prep...Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

A google search for that came up with over 50 sites to look at. And I went through them and found only one fellow who claimed to have solved the problem by moving some directories and paths around, but his paths were for a different install than mine and were irrelevant.

I tried adding various boot arguments to the kernel via BootX as many on those sites suggested without any luck. I could use the installer to get into the shell and find the init file which is at its default location, so I know it's there but it could be corrupted or something, say some.

If I don't find out any other info about how to get it going here, I will try one more time from scratch to install from the beginning, time allowing.

01-26-2003, 04:20 PM	#121
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	yeah, just can't seem to get out of that %&%#") commandline. where'd you get that image that didn't work? Seems like a I've got a working installation, but presently I'm unable to do anything with it Good luck, and let me know if you need any specifics. How do I launch th e gnome desktop environ ment? __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-26-2003, 04:52 PM	#123
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	hmrpph Yes I'm reading it. Something seems to be wrong with my http access. Have to study some it seems.. When I try to configure <<apt-setup>> I end up with an : <<Oops: Exception in kernel mode, sig 4....and then a lot more I don't understand>> __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-26-2003, 04:56 PM	#124
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	Ouch, tried pinging my router and got a KP....Will reboot in 180 secs...Damn! __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-26-2003, 05:10 PM	#126
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	Well,, maybe you're right. I just tried another mirror and now at least something is coming down. I'll play around with the manual some more tomorrow... Thanks for the encouragement! __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-26-2003, 09:54 PM	#129
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Hey Glanz, I'm currently installing on my powerbook. I was able to start the installation system from my floppies. I used a net install which started nicely and began downloading files, unlike the 7500 net install attempts, but then it came to an error about not being able to get bash. A subsequent try came back with another error, can't remember but it wasn't bash this time, and now every time I try to get to the base system files, it claims the server was unavailable or contained no release file. Well, that happened with the 7500 every time. And I can get into the shell on the powerbook whereas the 7500 would kernel panic as soon as I typed anything into the shell. Now, I see I have wget from the shell at /usr/bin. But I don't have wget on my main machine and don't know the command line options and flags for it. I thought maybe I could use wget to get the file on the machine and then point the installer towards it. Would it be something like: wget url_path_to_file destination/directory ??? Okay, wait a minute, I see usage on it now. No man pages yet though on the small rescue disk that the installer runs from. Would it be: wget -P /usr http://www.debian.org/debian/dists/w...t/basedebs.tar ...to put it into my /usr directory? Never mind. I tried it and it came back with a 404 file not found error, even though I can go there on my G4 and see the file or download it if I wanted to. It's the bugginess of this damn installer. I don't know what to do but abort the installation once again. Last edited by thatch; 01-26-2003 at 10:17 PM.

01-26-2003, 04:36 PM	#122
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	tjj, have you looked at the online manual located at http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/ ? That's where I got the links to the ISO CD image on one of the Debian mirrors. It's basically the same address as you had on your CD only with www.debian.org at the front. And that's where you find all the specifics on the installation and more for PowerPC's. You'd be about at chapter 9 or 10 now. There are 12 chapters total. The info on installing packages is a couple of chapters before all that. Have a look, it's all there. Okay, I just checked for you and it's on chapter 8 where you install and configure apt, 8.11.

01-26-2003, 04:57 PM	#125
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	tjj, I don't know what to say there on that. Perhaps go back a few chapters and find the correct info. You should have been following that all along from the beginning to get it all right. I know it's very long and sometimes a bit confusing. That's what I've been going through the last few days. But it's starting to make more sense to me now. Keep at it and I think you'll get it.

01-26-2003, 09:17 PM	#127
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	Tjj.... do you have XFree configured? If so yao may have to do a "startx" the first time as in FreeBSD.... I didn't with my deb install because I configured XFree during the installation. Without XFree86, YOU ARE STUCK IN COMMAND LINE MODE.

01-26-2003, 09:27 PM	#128
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	If you read this, you'll see why there's no prob installing Debian on iBooks.....

01-26-2003, 10:30 PM	#131
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Glanz, that's a lot of great information but only the wget was the part I needed. I'm in the middle of another install and don't want to scrap another drives hard work here. Sorry, but this is making me a bit grumpy. Apt is not on the installer's rescue disk files. It's too soon for that yet. I'm trying to get the base system files installed. But I'm stuck because of the extremely buggy nature of this installer.

01-26-2003, 10:37 PM	#132
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	ssOOOOKKKKK Thatch Whenever I mention the words "FreeBSD", my cat hides. I ALWAYS go through what you are going through on a FreeBSD install.

01-26-2003, 10:57 PM	#133
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	The installer's shell is ash, a bourne again clone. Now, I would think that to change directories, you would use cd. But there isn't a cd command. I need to change directories and make directories that are specific to the path that the installer would look for to install the basedebs.tar. But the darn thing won't accept a cd command or, more recently, I tried to make the directory, "dists", but it came back with a, "Cannot create directory `/usr/debian/dists': Input/output error". Buggy! Okay, now I see with a pwd command that it indeed is changing directories. But it still won't let me make more than the 'debian' directory. The attempt for 'dists' and 'main' come back with the input/output error. I need to make a specific directory path. A simple thing really. /target/usr/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-powerpc/base-images-current/ Last edited by thatch; 01-26-2003 at 11:08 PM.

01-27-2003, 04:17 PM	#136
tjj Major Leaguer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Posts: 271	hmm, still stuck in the commandline. The x11 IS installed, and it does try to launch, but hits a fatal error. Same when startx is run at the cl. I think I may have installed the wrong video drivers at some point during the initial installation. The error is something about no devices detected(!?) after loading ATI driver. Then fatal error: no screens found. But, I don't think the video card is ATI, wonder how it got there. Is it possible to overwrite/reinstall video drivers? According to the 3400 spec's it should be <<Video:HDI-15>>, but I can't seem to find anything like that when going into the installer again. Alas! btw, I can shutdown gracefully now. Powers off nicely. At least that's working __________________ -- Thomas 10.4.11 on Pismo 500 MHz/1GB 10.5.6 on iMac intel 2.16 GHz core duo/2GB

01-27-2003, 05:34 PM	#137
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	To reconfigure the X server there are two main options: you may try the command "xf86cfg"...or use the following command:: "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86"... I believe that from what you described here, the second option is called for.......

01-27-2003, 06:29 PM	#139
Glanz Major Leaguer Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 373	This means you do not have the drivers...OR...you doand they are the wrong ones for the hardware you have. You can edit any X-file you wish. You can also edit the "dev" files, but you must correctly identify your stuff.

01-28-2003, 02:05 AM	#140
thatch All Star Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 534	Update... I haven't had time for this since Sunday, but I went through another install. This time it went pretty flawlessly except for the basedebs.tar file which for some reason will not go with a net install. And trying to get it on a linux partition to install from there wouldn't work. But I found, as I had remembered from my attempts with the 7500, that I could put basedebs.tar on the Mac OS partition in the exact path of directories and point the installer towards it; a hard drive install. So, part floppy, part net install and part hard drive install. Got to the end of that and rebooted. Then I set up the BootX program, booted into the new system and didn't get too far along, about where the root drive is mounted read only and then it says it's freeing unused kernel memory: 184k init 28k prep...Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. A google search for that came up with over 50 sites to look at. And I went through them and found only one fellow who claimed to have solved the problem by moving some directories and paths around, but his paths were for a different install than mine and were irrelevant. I tried adding various boot arguments to the kernel via BootX as many on those sites suggested without any luck. I could use the installer to get into the shell and find the init file which is at its default location, so I know it's there but it could be corrupted or something, say some. If I don't find out any other info about how to get it going here, I will try one more time from scratch to install from the beginning, time allowing.