Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For PowerPC
Chapter 10 - Technical Information on the Boot Floppies

10.1 Source Code

The boot-floppies package contains all of the source code and documentation for the installation floppies.

10.2 Rescue Floppy

The rescue floppy has an Ext2 file system (or a FAT file system, depending on your architecture), and you should be able to access it from anything else that can mount Ext2 or FAT disks. The Linux kernel is in the file linux.bin. The file root.bin is a gzip-compressed disk image of a 1.4MB Minix or Ext2 file system, and will be loaded into the RAM disk and used as the root file system.

10.3 Replacing the Rescue Floppy Kernel

If you find it necessary to replace the kernel on the rescue floppy, you must configure your new kernel with these features linked in, not in loadable modules:

• RAM disk support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM)

• Initial RAM disk (initrd) support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD)

• Kernel support for ELF binaries (CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF)

• Loop device support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP)

• FAT, Minix, and Ext2 file systems (some architectures don't need FAT and/or Minix file systems — see the source) For PowerPC, Minix file support is not required, but HFS and ext2 are.

• Socket filtering for DHCP (CONFIG_FILTER)

• Packet socket, also for DHCP (CONFIG_PACKET)

• Unix domain sockets for system logging (CONFIG_UNIX)

Be sure that the kernel you plan to use does NOT have CONFIG_DEVFS set. CONFIG_DEVFS is not compatible with the installer.

Download a set of boot floppies: root, rescue, and driver disks. You will need the hfsutils package installed.

Your custom kernel should be named something like vmlinux when you're done building it. You will need to gzip -9 that file.

Update the boot-floppy-hfs.img disk for initial booting.

     hmount boot-floppy-hfs.img
     hcopy -r vmlinux.gz :zImage
     humount

Update the rescue disk since the installation gets the files from there. Mount the rescue disk image something like the following.

             mount -t auto -o loop rescue.bin /mnt

Assuming you used /mnt as the mount point, copy your custom kernel to /mnt/linux.bin.gz.

If you want to be complete about it, you'll also want to gzip the System.map from your custom kernel as sys_map.gz, and the config as config.gz, and place them in /mnt.

Now you can umount your disk image and burn your floppies. You will probably want to ``Install Kernel and Driver Modules'' using the floppies you just built to get your custom kernel installed on the hard drive.

You'll also want to replace the modules.tgz file on the driver floppies. This file simply contains a gzip-compressed tar file of /lib/modules/kernel-version; make it from the root file system so that all leading directories are in the tar file as well.

Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For PowerPC