[Cbe-oss-dev] Bug#514055: debian still not working on PS3

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 10:45:25AM -0700, Geoff Levand wrote:
> On 03/21/2009 10:38 AM, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > That is the BD drive. Did you have a disc in the drive at that point?
> > If so, what kind of disc?
> 
> The mini.iso installer, a CD-ROM.

The fact that you were successful makes me doubt it's a serious problem,
but it warrants investigating.

The installer should store some logs on your hard disk, under
/var/log/installer. Could you send me those files? Note that it may
contain some private information, such as your root password, and a list
of the packages you've got installed.

[...]
> >> 4) I needed to manually select to not install a bootloader.
> >> No yaboot.conf was installed, so I needed to create one manually.
> > 
> > Hrm. Does the PS3 boot with yaboot? If so, you should have been able to
> > select yaboot, and have it be installed to the system. That should also
> > have created your yaboot.conf.
> 
> PS3 uses petitboot (http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/petitboot/).
> It is a kexec based bootloader which can read kboot.conf and
> yaboot.conf files.
> 
> Due to the way the PS3 boots, the user must install a bootloader
> to flash memory before they can load a distro's installer.
> 
> I'll try the yaboot install and see what happens.  Is it possible
> to arrange for the installer to just create the yaboot.conf
> without installing yaboot?

No, that won't work. I simply wasn't aware of the particular way in
which the PS3 is booted.

I see that petitboot is free software. In that case, we should be able
to at least put it on the CD images.

Is it possible to install or update the flash booter from Linux, or can
one only do that from the PS3 builtin operating system?

-- 
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
  -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22