problem with BootX on a 4400

[greendwarf]

Hello,

I installed a Debian Sarge on my old Powermac 4400/160. Everything went
OK, I used BootX (oldworld mac) with a kernel and a ramdisk found in
the debian netinst cd.
The problem is : when I try to boot the newly installed linux system
with BootX, linux starts to boot normally but stops early in the
process with a "kernel panic : unable to mount root fs" error, though I
correctly told bootx to boot on /dev/hda8 (linux is installed on
partition #8)

I've searched almost everywhere, but found nothing at the moment. If
someone knows anything about configuring BootX options...

[Mikael Pettersson]

Post by greendwarf
Hello,
I installed a Debian Sarge on my old Powermac 4400/160. Everything went
OK, I used BootX (oldworld mac) with a kernel and a ramdisk found in
the debian netinst cd.
The problem is : when I try to boot the newly installed linux system
with BootX, linux starts to boot normally but stops early in the
process with a "kernel panic : unable to mount root fs" error, though I
correctly told bootx to boot on /dev/hda8 (linux is installed on
partition #8)
I've searched almost everywhere, but found nothing at the moment. If
someone knows anything about configuring BootX options...

This isn't necessarily a BootX problem. Assuming /dev/hda8 really
is your Linux /, and that you added root=/dev/hda8 to BootX'
options field, then the failure can very well be because:
- missing block device driver for hda
- missing file system driver for whatever fs is on /dev/hda8
- missing Apple partition support
And these things can be missing due to the kernel being
misconfigured, or because you built them as modules but didn't
load them via an initrd.

Your kernel's boot messages will probably identify the exact problem.

[Andrea]

Post by Mikael Pettersson

Post by greendwarf
Hello,
I installed a Debian Sarge on my old Powermac 4400/160. Everything went
OK, I used BootX (oldworld mac) with a kernel and a ramdisk found in
the debian netinst cd.
The problem is : when I try to boot the newly installed linux system
with BootX, linux starts to boot normally but stops early in the
process with a "kernel panic : unable to mount root fs" error, though I
correctly told bootx to boot on /dev/hda8 (linux is installed on
partition #8)
I've searched almost everywhere, but found nothing at the moment. If
someone knows anything about configuring BootX options...

This isn't necessarily a BootX problem. Assuming /dev/hda8 really
is your Linux /, and that you added root=/dev/hda8 to BootX'
- missing block device driver for hda
- missing file system driver for whatever fs is on /dev/hda8
- missing Apple partition support
And these things can be missing due to the kernel being
misconfigured, or because you built them as modules but didn't
load them via an initrd.
Your kernel's boot messages will probably identify the exact problem.

I hope you are using the kernel from the installed system to boot with bootx
and not the one that you pull to install . if not you must boot via CD and
mount hda8 and macos partition and cp kernel to your installed system.
There is an how to on ubunto web side you can google for it bye
Andrea

[greendwarf]

thanks for the replies.

well I already tried this, copying the new kernel from install to the
"linux kernels" folder used by bootx didn't help (same error
message...)

Anyway, I don't know if I can test all the points spotted by Mikael
cause I couldn't get all the informations (i'm now using quik as
bootloader, it seems very buggy but it boots linux anyway) but :
- when booting w/ bootx all the tests done by the system seem OK
(except my error...)
- the fs on /dev/hda8 is ext2
- I don't know how I can tell if there is a mising apple partition
support... don't really know how that stuff works
- I launched the install with a initrd.gz ramdisk.

I'm now running debian with quik because I needed it quickly, but if I
want to reinstall it someday I really hope I will fix this boot...

[JS McAuley]

I'm having the exact same problem with a pm7600 upgraded with a 500MHz G3
card. Mac OS lives on a IDE drive and Kubantu was installed by itsself on a
4.3g scsi. I followed the directions from the ubantu how-to substituting
hde8, but I don't think I was successfull copying boot/vmlinux to the linux
kernals folder in OS9.
Any ideas?
Scott.

Post by greendwarf
Hello,
I installed a Debian Sarge on my old Powermac 4400/160. Everything went
OK, I used BootX (oldworld mac) with a kernel and a ramdisk found in
the debian netinst cd.
The problem is : when I try to boot the newly installed linux system
with BootX, linux starts to boot normally but stops early in the
process with a "kernel panic : unable to mount root fs" error, though I
correctly told bootx to boot on /dev/hda8 (linux is installed on
partition #8)
I've searched almost everywhere, but found nothing at the moment. If
someone knows anything about configuring BootX options...

[greendwarf]

If you're not afraid with Open Firmware, you can try the same thing I
do now to boot linux or mac os with the help of an utility that sets
OF's options in PRAM :

- in mac os 9, install System Disk
(http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/) or Boot
Variables
- follow the instructions given in the tutorial, you can tell open
firmware to show the boot prompt at every startup... then you can type
"boot" for linux, or "bye" for macos...

on my 4400 it works great and does the same thing than bootx
if you made a mistake, reset the PRAM with Command+P+R at startup, it
will boot mac os directly without the OF's prompt.