linux-apus-devel

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

> Runs OK for me (A4k/CSPPC/CV-PPC/OS3.5); output looks valid, but I haven't
> been able to test it properly as I don't have a functioning APUS system at
> the moment.  Building one is on my (very) long list of things to do.

:-)   okay, do you not use the 'noscsi' option on your CSPPC, or do you
have any extra hardware that you enable etc?
 
> What are the odds of bumping in to you at LinuxExpo in London this year?

so long as I'm not still out in Japan upgrading Digital UNIX boxes
(doubtful as I'm going out there in mid-june) the odds will be very high -
perhaps we (and other UK/Euro people?) can arrange to meet at
LinuxEpxo2001 @ Olympia London 4th-5th July (what day are you going?)

not sorry for the blatant plug, its free and Linux  ;-)

alan

Re: build problems of linux-apus cvs

[Michel <mic...@ii...>]

Roman Zippel wrote:
> 
> "GürerÖzen" wrote:
> 
> > RZ> I guess it's CONFIG_RTC, in the precompiled kernel this is a module,
> > so RZ> it does no harm.
> >
> > It was the generic pm2 gfx card option, don't know why i enabled it.
> 
> Hmm, it's not needed, but it also shouldn't hurt.

But it does currently. For some reason the pm2fb generic PCI code isn't happy
with our PCI implementation...


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)    \   Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
CS student, Free Software enthusiast   \        XFree86 and DRI project member

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 06:36:58PM +0000, Duncan Gibb wrote:
> On 15-May-01, Alan Buxey wrote:
> 
> AB> certainly boot-programs (such as the APUS/AF-booter (by Mr Duncan )
> AB> need MUI libraries, but the plain boothack/bootstrap for APUS just
> AB> needs powerpc.library, which is in ROM
> 
> Evening, Dr Buxley.  That MUI-GUI is aeons out of date now, and really wants
> re-implementing much less quick-and-dirtily.  Any GUI launcher or frontend
> small enough to be of use on a boot floppy would have to be rewritten to use
> only ROM-resident stuff.

Yes, that would be very nice.

BTW, it could be directly integrated with ami/apusboot also.

That said, this would be the second step for this, the first step would be a
text only thing.

Friendl,y

Sven Lutherr

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 07:18:52PM +0200, Giorgio Terzi wrote:
> Hello Christian, hello all,
> 
> ...
> > Floppys on m68k are completely useless AFAIK. Since Amigalilo is not
> > supported by Debian, who needs floppies anyways when everything comes on CD? 
>   
> I have "loaded" from floppies the images i have put on them only 
> for the sake of test!
> 
> I have not bootstrapped with rescue floppy-disk! 
> 
> I also know that is impossible for Amiga to bootstrap with a MS-DOS floppy
> disk. 
> But i have tested that, if someone is mad like me, :)) he can load and
> configure 
> the kernel and the drivers by means of floppy disks , is it so bad ?
> Debian dbootstrap program gives also this chance!
> 
> I have tried to bootstrap APUS with a 1,76K Amiga floppy-disk and with 
> this format the problem is not the space, but in bootstrap program 
> (i use Warp-Up) that after the loading of the (of course compressed) 
> kernel crashes. 

what program are you using on the floppy disk ? I suppose that if it is the
same as the one you use normally, it would be dependent on warp-up. But i
guess warp-up is not in rom, so did you put it on the floppy also ?

Did you try it with the standard  powerup stuff ? Since you are booting from a
floppy, this should be the standard setting, is it not ?

Could you provide us with some logs (bootstrap & dmesg) of the crashed launch
? Post it to the linux-apus list please. Also the script you use for
launching could be usefull.

> I am trying to understand why...
> For an 880k floppy the space problem makes impossible to do it.
> But i wish to be contraddicted... :))

Well, we could split the kernel in 2 and join it in ram: before launching it.
Or we could try for a less than 880Ko modular kernel, but i have not big hopes
on this one. Michel Daenzer is the apus kernel package maintainer for debian.

Both solution may be used, if there is time to try it out and such.

> For Sven Luther:
> I was very busy in the last days, and i think i have lost some steps.:))

Ok, i understand you.

BTW, 

Upto now, you were able to bootstarp from the floppy disk set, and able to
install and configure the kernel & modules, isn't it. All this with the 2.2.10
kernel. (btw did you solve the 2.2.19 requirement of install.sh ? did you try
the little patch i sent to you yesterday or the day before ?

> Please may you list me what do you need for the next tests ? 
> Thank you.

Ok, now the next step would be :

1) download the base tarball of woody (if there is such a thing) and try the
installation of it. If this works, then i would call the basic apus boot
floppies useable. You could try the networked (trough ppp) install after that,
but i guess this should be ok.

2) you could try it with an 2.4.x kernel, to see if it works also, and to see
if much changes where needed for it, what do you think ?

3) coordinate with alan for the floppy disk booting thingy.

That's all i see for now.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Duncan G. <DG...@Du...>]

On 15-May-01, Alan Buxey wrote:

AB> can people run this little utilty and give some feedback

Runs OK for me (A4k/CSPPC/CV-PPC/OS3.5); output looks valid, but I haven't
been able to test it properly as I don't have a functioning APUS system at
the moment.  Building one is on my (very) long list of things to do.


AB> PS thanks Duncan for responding!

;-)

What are the odds of bumping in to you at LinuxExpo in London this year?


Duncan



-- 
... Dylan's brain was being unusually active for the time of the morning.

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

can people run this little utilty and give some feedback as to any errors
it makes/gives?  Its just the beginning of a small tool i knocked up this
evening....

I've started looking through bootstrap source..are there any other places
that i can see options in? the docs I do have are so out of date...can
anyone supply any/all of the missing flags this utility currently does not
ask for?


alan

PS thanks Duncan for responding!

Re: Warning! Sourceforge has made changes

[Michel <mic...@ii...>]

Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

> On Tue, 15 May 2001, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> 
>>Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 15 May 2001, Alan Buxey wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 1st directories for users and groups have been split into first,
>>>>then first+second letters of the user name or group:
>>>>
>>>>       OLD: /home/users/username, /home/users/foobar
>>>>       NEW: /home/users/u/us/username, /home/users/f/fo/foobar
>>>>
>>This info was in the motd for some time BTW.
>>
>>
>>>So CVSROOT/loginfo has to be changed as well?
>>>
>>You mean for the changelog? Don't think so, that's only on the CVS machine 
>>which doesn't offer access besides CVS. If anyone has a good idea how to get 
>>it outta there, speak up.
>>
> 
> So the path to your homedir does not change on the CVS machine? Weird...


I'm not sure though, wouldn't be terribly surprised either way. :)


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)    \   Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
CS student, Free Software enthusiast   \        XFree86 and DRI project member

Re: Warning! Sourceforge has made changes

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Michel D=E4nzer wrote:
> Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 May 2001, Alan Buxey wrote:
> >>On May 1st directories for users and groups have been split into firs=
t,
> >>then first+second letters of the user name or group:
> >>
> >>        OLD: /home/users/username, /home/users/foobar
> >>        NEW: /home/users/u/us/username, /home/users/f/fo/foobar
>=20
> This info was in the motd for some time BTW.
>=20
> > So CVSROOT/loginfo has to be changed as well?
>=20
> You mean for the changelog? Don't think so, that's only on the CVS mach=
ine=20
> which doesn't offer access besides CVS. If anyone has a good idea how t=
o get=20
> it outta there, speak up.

So the path to your homedir does not change on the CVS machine? Weird...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m6=
8k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. =
But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like=
 that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: Warning! Sourceforge has made changes

[Michel <mic...@ii...>]

Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

> On Tue, 15 May 2001, Alan Buxey wrote:
> 
>>On May 1st directories for users and groups have been split into first,
>>then first+second letters of the user name or group:
>>
>>        OLD: /home/users/username, /home/users/foobar
>>        NEW: /home/users/u/us/username, /home/users/f/fo/foobar


This info was in the motd for some time BTW.


> So CVSROOT/loginfo has to be changed as well?


You mean for the changelog? Don't think so, that's only on the CVS machine 
which doesn't offer access besides CVS. If anyone has a good idea how to get 
it outta there, speak up.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)    \   Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
CS student, Free Software enthusiast   \        XFree86 and DRI project member

Re: Warning! Sourceforge has made changes

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Alan Buxey wrote:
> On May 1st directories for users and groups have been split into first,
> then first+second letters of the user name or group:
> 
>         OLD: /home/users/username, /home/users/foobar
>         NEW: /home/users/u/us/username, /home/users/f/fo/foobar

So CVSROOT/loginfo has to be changed as well?

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

			    Geert (peeking at loginfo to steal for fbdev :-)

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Duncan G. <DG...@Du...>]

On 15-May-01, Alan Buxey wrote:

AB> certainly boot-programs (such as the APUS/AF-booter (by Mr Duncan )
AB> need MUI libraries, but the plain boothack/bootstrap for APUS just
AB> needs powerpc.library, which is in ROM

Evening, Dr Buxley.  That MUI-GUI is aeons out of date now, and really wants
re-implementing much less quick-and-dirtily.  Any GUI launcher or frontend
small enough to be of use on a boot floppy would have to be rewritten to use
only ROM-resident stuff.



Duncan



-- 
... I have plenty of talent and vision. I just don't give a damn.

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Giorgio T. <de...@ip...>]

Hello Christian, hello all,

...
> Floppys on m68k are completely useless AFAIK. Since Amigalilo is not
> supported by Debian, who needs floppies anyways when everything comes on CD? 
  
I have "loaded" from floppies the images i have put on them only 
for the sake of test!

I have not bootstrapped with rescue floppy-disk! 

I also know that is impossible for Amiga to bootstrap with a MS-DOS floppy
disk. 
But i have tested that, if someone is mad like me, :)) he can load and
configure 
the kernel and the drivers by means of floppy disks , is it so bad ?
Debian dbootstrap program gives also this chance!

I have tried to bootstrap APUS with a 1,76K Amiga floppy-disk and with 
this format the problem is not the space, but in bootstrap program 
(i use Warp-Up) that after the loading of the (of course compressed) 
kernel crashes. 
I am trying to understand why...
For an 880k floppy the space problem makes impossible to do it.
But i wish to be contraddicted... :))

For Sven Luther:
I was very busy in the last days, and i think i have lost some steps.:))
Please may you list me what do you need for the next tests ? 
Thank you.

Regards
-- 
                           Giorgio Terzi

Warning! Sourceforge has made changes

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

okay, perhaps they just missed my email address when they/if they mailed
out information, but the directory structure has been heavily changed.

On May 1st directories for users and groups have been split into first,
then first+second letters of the user name or group:

        OLD: /home/users/username, /home/users/foobar
        NEW: /home/users/u/us/username, /home/users/f/fo/foobar
 
        OLD: /home/groups/projectname, /home/groups/myproject
        NEW: /home/groups/p/pr/projectname, /home/groups/m/my/myproject                                          

this means its now /home/groups/l/li/linux-apus


this REALLY screwed up the Faq-O-Matic.... and yet noone informed us that
the FAQ was dead (for 2 weeks!) - typical of the users eh?  ;-)

anyway, I've just been playing around with various files and have got it
back into a working order.  Time spent WAS going to be used to add some
new items, but that'll now have to wait :-|


Alan

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:19:14PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> hi,
> 
> > mmm, they are not really difficult to do, i remember writting my own split
> > programs, because non where availabel back then. 
> 
> /me thinks there are several free clones of join/split on aminet

It's trivial to write, just some read/writes and an appropriate for loop.

> > (altough not test them). The only real problem is the choice program, but if
> > you only want the launch the debian install stuff, then even that is not
> > needed.
> 
> a small C program could output the bootstrap line required to ram: and
> then the script would execute that command

What is the problem with executing it directly from the C program, trough some
instance of the exec family of function (see the exec (3) man page ?) It would
be easier than what you propose.

ideally this program would :

1) ask for the user choice (install debian with or without kernel options, use
   an existing partition (with or without kernel options), boot into amigaos
   (well CLI)).

2) test if we are using a 1.76Mo floppy disk (maybe reading the size of the
   linux kernel would do it, if it >880Ko, then we are in a 1.76 Mo floppy
   disk).

3) if the above test fails, ask if we want to use a 2 floppy kernel setup, if
   yes, load the 2 halves of the kernel, join them and copy them to ram:.
   modify the -k option accordingly.

4) invoke ami/apus boot with the options provided by above.

That's it, we have working 880Ko and 1.76Mo amiga (m68k and apus) rescue
disks.

Someone could even contribute some nice graphical stuff if they feel like it,
either a GUI stuff, or some hardware banging menu with a big debian scrolling
in the background. mmm, now that i think of it, i do have some such asm code
lying around somewhere.

Too sad i don't have a working amiga right now, nor time for it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

> mmm, they are not really difficult to do, i remember writting my own split
> programs, because non where availabel back then. 

/me thinks there are several free clones of join/split on aminet
 
> (altough not test them). The only real problem is the choice program, but if
> you only want the launch the debian install stuff, then even that is not
> needed.

a small C program could output the bootstrap line required to ram: and
then the script would execute that command
 
alan

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

> But the bootblock is code. Of course we can reverse engineer and clean room
> reimplement one (IIRC it justs opens dos.library and returns 1 or 0).

over 10,000 coders have made their own bootblocks for Amiga
floppies...either commercial games or demo disks. 

some even got sine-scrolling messages with a chip-tune to fit into 
that one sector  8-)
  
> Yep. But it's quite useless without real commands on the disk :-)

theres...50?..commands in AmigaROM and the libraries built-in
(all major AmigaOS ones - after all, workbench can boot up with just the
'loadwb' command on a bootable floppy!) 
 
> Because it's easier to mess up things with tar/lha than with ADF or DMS?
> Alternatively, let them use gunzip and dd :-)

:-)  oh dear, I can imagine where that'd lead
 
alan

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Alan B. <al...@ms...>]

hi,

> > no, and yes.  Under AmigaOS you run 'install df0:' but this doesnt
> > put any files onto the disk as such, it just writes a bootblock
> > (a few hundred bytes) to the floppy. Theres no reason why we couldnt have
> > an AmigaOS bootblock and write it to disk with 'dd' 
> 
> but you do get access to the CLI if i remember well, isn't it ?

yes - but you only run stuff that is in AmigaROM. 
 
> Not on cyberstorm boards. how big is it anyway ? I don't think we can ship
> that, but then maybe we could, if we ask nicely. Ralph would be the author, no
> that there is no phase5 anymore. Also this don't apply to the m68k case.

I guess we have to ask Ralph for permission for the CS_PPC cards.
 
> why not a plain gzipped tarball or lha archive ?

because the floppy still must be 'install'ed , whereas an ADF image *is*
the whole floppy and will write-out nicely.  of course, if you are going
to do everything under AmigaOS (courtesy of an emergencyboot.{lha/tar.gz}
on the Debian CD) then you can just stick a small AmigaOS script into the 
same directory which will format a floppy, install it then depack stuff
onto it


alan

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:50:29PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Tue, 15 May 2001, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 03:17:52PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> > > > And did you have the same amount of stuff in it ? 
> > > 
> > > these are the standard downloadables from APUS@sourceforge
> > > 
> > > they have pretty much the same functionality. I guess
> > > there are many features that can be cut out of 2.4.4
> > > (but most stuff, such as khttpd are as modules already)
> > 
> > Ok, do you still volunteer to give it a try ?
> > 
> > mmm, would it be possible to make 880Ko ones ? i don't think so, but then you
> > may be able to do it, splitting the kernel in 2 and reconstructiong it again
> > in the ramdisk. You would need copy and join though. Are those in the AimgaOS
> > rom ? maybe ...
> 
> Copy and join are in C:.

:((( thought so.

mmm, they are not really difficult to do, i remember writting my own split
programs, because non where availabel back then. 

You could write them in C, a kind of very small amiboot utility ? 

Or even maybe implement the functionality in ami/apus boot to have separate
files on separate floppies.

But this isn't really worth it. The 1.76 Mo floppy stuff would be though, as
it is not really difficult to do. I am nsure someone with a 1.76Mo floppy
could make them in less than 10 minutes. Even i could give make them right now
(altough not test them). The only real problem is the choice program, but if
you only want the launch the debian install stuff, then even that is not
needed.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:49:26PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Tue, 15 May 2001, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 03:15:14PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> > > > Don't you need some part of AmigaOS to make a floppy bootable?
> > > 
> > > no, and yes.  Under AmigaOS you run 'install df0:' but this doesnt
> > > put any files onto the disk as such, it just writes a bootblock
> > > (a few hundred bytes) to the floppy. Theres no reason why we couldnt have
> > > an AmigaOS bootblock and write it to disk with 'dd' 
> 
> But the bootblock is code. Of course we can reverse engineer and clean room
> reimplement one (IIRC it justs opens dos.library and returns 1 or 0).
> 
> > but you do get access to the CLI if i remember well, isn't it ?
> 
> Yep. But it's quite useless without real commands on the disk :-)

Well, but it could call the ami/apus boot launching script. We could even have
a (self written) little ask and choose program, or could that be done with
just a script ?

> > > theres no issue of copyright with bootable floppies. PD software has been
> > > on such things for years.  I guess as a last resort we can create a
> > > bootable emegency floppy, compact it into ADF format and then it can go
> > > onto the CD - and users can make it themselves from under AmigaOS with
> > > transADF and the like?
> > 
> > why not a plain gzipped tarball or lha archive ?
> 
> Because it's easier to mess up things with tar/lha than with ADF or DMS?
> Alternatively, let them use gunzip and dd :-)

anything you feel best.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 09:44:26AM -0500, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > > 
> > > not that i can think of.  certainly boot-programs (such as the
> > > APUS/AF-booter (by Mr Duncan ) need MUI libraries, but the plain
> > > boothack/bootstrap for APUS just needs powerpc.library, which is in ROM
> I don't use APUS, plain old A2k. AFAIK amiboot needs some AOS libraries,
> Geert?

Which are in the rom, most of them anyway, isn't it. They will be installed on
any amiga hardware we care to use, unless you are speaking about the rare
draco boxes.

> > If nothing did change since potato, boot floppies are non free anyway.
> Um, the lha code was removed long ago. m68k is not the reason for bf to be
> non-free. Is it still? BTW, it was in contrib...

There were some other thinks there, i think.

> > > theres no issue of copyright with bootable floppies. PD software has been
> > > on such things for years.  I guess as a last resort we can create a
> > > bootable emegency floppy, compact it into ADF format and then it can go
> > > onto the CD - and users can make it themselves from under AmigaOS with
> > > transADF and the like?
> You did not get my point... if you need linux to write the linux
> boot-floppy, you alread have linux installed, so what? If you need AOS to
> write the floppy, you already have AOS installed, so just double click on the
> StartInstall Icon. SO WHAT? It does not work from a PC, unless you have a

Suppose you want to reformat your harddisk, so that it be full linux (not
adviceable but still), suppose you have to buy a new harddisk, because you
older one died, and you can only have one connected at a time (for whatever
reason). Suppose you want ot have a rescue floppy, in case something goes
(very) wrong while you were just testing the boot floppies for example.

All the above objections are the same if you were using linux on i386.

> special controller, and it will give you no improvement when you do it on an
> amiga. Don't tell me you could need a rescue floppy, you can always use

Or you may just prepare the floppies on amiga 1 and do the installation on
amiga 2, or on the one of a friend (which has strange powerup libraries
installed which will make apusboot fail) 

> StartInstall to get a rescue system up (unless you trash your AOS disk, but
> you mount them read-only, so its not going to happen). I do not see any

Why not, a badly done fdisk job will do just that ?

> benefit from bootable floppies for amigas. I can already hear the users
> screaming "your floppy does not work on my system"... but if somebody else
> is going to put that into bf, document it and take all the hits from the
> users, youre welcome.

Sure, but the real question, is if it is easy to do (most of use do someting
similar on our harddisk by hand anyway), then why not do it.

mmm, what do you feel could be a reason for them not to work for people ? The
only reason i see is if they try 1.76Mo floppies in 880Ko drives.

> > why not a plain gzipped tarball or lha archive ?
> How do you write the bootblock with tar? Or lha? Only ADF, DMS and similar
> would work.

you just to it with install under amigaos, and then copy the stuff over to
your floppy disk. why make things complicated when you can make it easy.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > > not that i can think of.  certainly boot-programs (such as the
> > > APUS/AF-booter (by Mr Duncan ) need MUI libraries, but the plain
> > > boothack/bootstrap for APUS just needs powerpc.library, which is in ROM
> I don't use APUS, plain old A2k. AFAIK amiboot needs some AOS libraries,

Me neither.

> Geert?

Since we switched for ixemul.library to libnix, no non-ROM libraries are needed
anymore, except perhaps SetPatch and 68040.library for '040 boxes (aiii).

> > > almost all supported stuff...the only main exception that rings alarm
> > > bells in my head is the CyverVision3D - doesnt this have to be initialised
> > > to the resolution you want under workbench before laucnhing into APU - or
> > > is this now fixed?
> CV3D works, at least from the m68k kernel images. Ken did not officially
> release the source yet (are you listeing?), but the lastet driver works on
> ZorroII (and probably on Zorro3, since he did it).

Yep, where are the patches???

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 03:17:52PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> > > And did you have the same amount of stuff in it ? 
> > 
> > these are the standard downloadables from APUS@sourceforge
> > 
> > they have pretty much the same functionality. I guess
> > there are many features that can be cut out of 2.4.4
> > (but most stuff, such as khttpd are as modules already)
> 
> Ok, do you still volunteer to give it a try ?
> 
> mmm, would it be possible to make 880Ko ones ? i don't think so, but then you
> may be able to do it, splitting the kernel in 2 and reconstructiong it again
> in the ramdisk. You would need copy and join though. Are those in the AimgaOS
> rom ? maybe ...

Copy and join are in C:.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Geert U. <ge...@li...>]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 03:15:14PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> > > Don't you need some part of AmigaOS to make a floppy bootable?
> > 
> > no, and yes.  Under AmigaOS you run 'install df0:' but this doesnt
> > put any files onto the disk as such, it just writes a bootblock
> > (a few hundred bytes) to the floppy. Theres no reason why we couldnt have
> > an AmigaOS bootblock and write it to disk with 'dd' 

But the bootblock is code. Of course we can reverse engineer and clean room
reimplement one (IIRC it justs opens dos.library and returns 1 or 0).

> but you do get access to the CLI if i remember well, isn't it ?

Yep. But it's quite useless without real commands on the disk :-)

> > theres no issue of copyright with bootable floppies. PD software has been
> > on such things for years.  I guess as a last resort we can create a
> > bootable emegency floppy, compact it into ADF format and then it can go
> > onto the CD - and users can make it themselves from under AmigaOS with
> > transADF and the like?
> 
> why not a plain gzipped tarball or lha archive ?

Because it's easier to mess up things with tar/lha than with ADF or DMS?
Alternatively, let them use gunzip and dd :-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- ge...@li...

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Christian T. S. <ct...@de...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > 
> > not that i can think of.  certainly boot-programs (such as the
> > APUS/AF-booter (by Mr Duncan ) need MUI libraries, but the plain
> > boothack/bootstrap for APUS just needs powerpc.library, which is in ROM
I don't use APUS, plain old A2k. AFAIK amiboot needs some AOS libraries,
Geert?
 
> If nothing did change since potato, boot floppies are non free anyway.
Um, the lha code was removed long ago. m68k is not the reason for bf to be
non-free. Is it still? BTW, it was in contrib...
 
> > > Can all hardware already be set up by the kernel?
> > 
> > almost all supported stuff...the only main exception that rings alarm
> > bells in my head is the CyverVision3D - doesnt this have to be initialised
> > to the resolution you want under workbench before laucnhing into APU - or
> > is this now fixed?
CV3D works, at least from the m68k kernel images. Ken did not officially
release the source yet (are you listeing?), but the lastet driver works on
ZorroII (and probably on Zorro3, since he did it).
 
> > theres no issue of copyright with bootable floppies. PD software has been
> > on such things for years.  I guess as a last resort we can create a
> > bootable emegency floppy, compact it into ADF format and then it can go
> > onto the CD - and users can make it themselves from under AmigaOS with
> > transADF and the like?
You did not get my point... if you need linux to write the linux
boot-floppy, you alread have linux installed, so what? If you need AOS to
write the floppy, you already have AOS installed, so just double click on the
StartInstall Icon. SO WHAT? It does not work from a PC, unless you have a
special controller, and it will give you no improvement when you do it on an
amiga. Don't tell me you could need a rescue floppy, you can always use
StartInstall to get a rescue system up (unless you trash your AOS disk, but
you mount them read-only, so its not going to happen). I do not see any
benefit from bootable floppies for amigas. I can already hear the users
screaming "your floppy does not work on my system"... but if somebody else
is going to put that into bf, document it and take all the hits from the
users, youre welcome.
 
> why not a plain gzipped tarball or lha archive ?
How do you write the bootblock with tar? Or lha? Only ADF, DMS and similar
would work.

Christian
-- 
http://people.debian.org/~cts/

Re: APUS Debian Boot-Floppies Images and bugs

[Sven L. <lu...@dp...>]

On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 03:17:52PM +0100, Alan Buxey wrote:
> hi,
> 
> > And did you have the same amount of stuff in it ? 
> 
> these are the standard downloadables from APUS@sourceforge
> 
> they have pretty much the same functionality. I guess
> there are many features that can be cut out of 2.4.4
> (but most stuff, such as khttpd are as modules already)

Ok, do you still volunteer to give it a try ?

mmm, would it be possible to make 880Ko ones ? i don't think so, but then you
may be able to do it, splitting the kernel in 2 and reconstructiong it again
in the ramdisk. You would need copy and join though. Are those in the AimgaOS
rom ? maybe ...

But then, i don't think the 880Ko ones are really worth it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther