Mailing List Archive

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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On Sun September 10 2006 11:37, Charles Trois wrote:

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

The symptoms seem like a problem I had installing Gentoo on an *old* Power Mac
(one of those really heavy beige boxes). On boot, the initial penguin and a
few lines of text were all I saw, and the box seemed dead. However, it
turned out that I hadn't loaded the right video driver in the kernel, and so
(at the point in the bootup process where it changes video modes) the screen
was freezing, though the machine was actually up and running.

Some things to check:

Is it actually alive? Do the Caps-/Num-Lock keys cause lights to change on
the keyboard? If you type your login and password (even though you can't see
anything) and then something like "ls -R /" can you hear hard drive activity?

How I dealt with the problem when I had it (working from memory here):

1. Wait for boot activity to cease (no hard drive noise) and log in as root
(typing blind).
2. "emerge ssh" and wait for hard drive noise to stop.
3. "/etc/init.d/sshd start" and wait a bit. (First time sshd starts, it
generates some keys, which can take a few minutes if your machine is slow
like that one was.)
4. Go to another box on the LAN and log in to that one. From there, you
should be able to build a new kernel, set up yaboot, etc.

I hope this is some help to you. :)

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Hash: SHA1

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

This sounds an awful lot like you're missing the Framebuffer device
driver. Which iMac do you have exactly? Perhaps try the
Framebuffer/X setup suggested in the PPC FAQ as described here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml#xorg

- -Joe
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Joseph Jezak a écrit :
>
> Charles Trois wrote:
>> 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. Then there
>> is nothing, and I have to cut the power to go on.
>
> This sounds an awful lot like you're missing the Framebuffer device
> driver. Which iMac do you have exactly? Perhaps try the
> Framebuffer/X setup suggested in the PPC FAQ as described here:
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml#xorg
>
> - -Joe
Many thanks to all who have replied!
The problem was indeed one of framebuffer.

My machine is a G4 iMac with LCD.
The video card is a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX.
I had to add support for nvidia fb device in the kernel (the handbook
states that only the OF device should be used in the case of nvidia, but
I obviously misunderstood this).

This solved my first problem. I got into a further one about udev, which
I was able to fix (support for tmpfs was missing).

And now it is a clock problem. The error message (copied by hand) reads:

Cannot access the hardware clock... try the --debug option.

hwclock --debug gives this:

hwclock: Open of /dev/rtc failed, errno=2: no such file or directory
No usable clock interface found

This is strange, as /dev/rtc exists. On the kernel side there is "yes"
to "RTCclass", "sysfs", "proc" and "dev". The RTC to read is "rtc0".

Any suggestions?

By the way, enablecdboot did not work because I had written
"enable cdboot". My mistake.

Charles



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Charles Trois wrote:
> Joseph Jezak a écrit :
>>
>> Charles Trois wrote:
>>> 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. Then there
>>> is nothing, and I have to cut the power to go on.
>>
>> This sounds an awful lot like you're missing the Framebuffer device
>> driver. Which iMac do you have exactly? Perhaps try the
>> Framebuffer/X setup suggested in the PPC FAQ as described here:
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml#xorg
>>
>> - -Joe
> Many thanks to all who have replied!
> The problem was indeed one of framebuffer.
>
> My machine is a G4 iMac with LCD.
> The video card is a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX.
> I had to add support for nvidia fb device in the kernel (the handbook
> states that only the OF device should be used in the case of nvidia, but
> I obviously misunderstood this).
>
> This solved my first problem. I got into a further one about udev, which
> I was able to fix (support for tmpfs was missing).
>
> And now it is a clock problem. The error message (copied by hand) reads:
>
> Cannot access the hardware clock... try the --debug option.
>
> hwclock --debug gives this:
>
> hwclock: Open of /dev/rtc failed, errno=2: no such file or directory
> No usable clock interface found
>
> This is strange, as /dev/rtc exists. On the kernel side there is "yes"
> to "RTCclass", "sysfs", "proc" and "dev". The RTC to read is "rtc0".
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> By the way, enablecdboot did not work because I had written
> "enable cdboot". My mistake.
>
> Charles

To fix the clock problem, make sure that you have the Generic RTC
emulation and the Extended RTC Emulation enabled.

As for the Framebuffer issue, it seems to change every kernel as to
which Framebuffer driver (OF, rivafb, or nvidiafb) is working. :p
Sorry for the confusion.

-Joe
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Joseph Jezak a écrit :

> To fix the clock problem, make sure that you have the Generic RTC
> emulation and the Extended RTC Emulation enabled.

Yes, that was just it, as a little search with Google has shown
meanwhile. I apologize for being too hasty.

> As for the Framebuffer issue, it seems to change every kernel as to
> which Framebuffer driver (OF, rivafb, or nvidiafb) is working. :p
> Sorry for the confusion.

My Gentoo is now in operation. Thanks again to everybody.

Charles
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