Debian Ports Installation

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m (Installation of Debian unstable via debian-ports repository)
m (Installation of Debian unstable via debian-ports repository)
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* Instructions to burn the ISO image on a Mac: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5132196
 
* Instructions to burn the ISO image on a Mac: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5132196
 
* '''IMPORTANT: ''' If your machine has a DVD-drive, you should better burn the image to a DVD disc. The first-generation DVD-drives in some older PA-RISC machines may have problems booting from e.g. a CD-RW so you may get this error message: ''IPL error: bad LIF magic.''
 
* '''IMPORTANT: ''' If your machine has a DVD-drive, you should better burn the image to a DVD disc. The first-generation DVD-drives in some older PA-RISC machines may have problems booting from e.g. a CD-RW so you may get this error message: ''IPL error: bad LIF magic.''
* Those images should work on all machines, with 32- and 64bit kernels. Installation of a C8000 workstation needs to happen via serial console since the installer imager will not activate the ATI graphics card. After installation the ATI cards will work in non-accelerated mode though.   
+
* Those images should work on all machines, with 32- and 64bit kernels. Installation of a C8000 workstation needs to happen via serial console since the install image will not activate the ATI graphics card. After installation the ATI cards will work in non-accelerated mode though.   
 
* If your machine is behind a firewall, enter the proxy at the IPL command line the Linux kernel command line (change parameter 7):
 
* If your machine is behind a firewall, enter the proxy at the IPL command line the Linux kernel command line (change parameter 7):
 
   mirror/http/proxy=http://proxy:8080  (adjust the proxy settings to your need and drop the underscores)
 
   mirror/http/proxy=http://proxy:8080  (adjust the proxy settings to your need and drop the underscores)
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* At the "Software selection" screen,  
 
* At the "Software selection" screen,  
 
** for the debian 7.0 disc: do not enable any software other than "SSH server" . You can install additional software later!
 
** for the debian 7.0 disc: do not enable any software other than "SSH server" . You can install additional software later!
** for the debian 8.0 disc: You can choose to install the (not yet: KDE-, LXDE-, MATE- or Xfce desktops,) SSH, web- and print server. Do not choose to install the GNOME desktop since it will fail (we are still missing iceweasel on hppa!).  
+
** for the debian 8.0 disc: You can choose to install the KDE-, LXDE-, MATE- or Xfce desktops, SSH, web- and print server. Do not choose to install the GNOME desktop since it will fail (we are still having problems to compile a recent-enough iceweasel on hppa!).  
 
* for the debian 7.0 disc:
 
* for the debian 7.0 disc:
 
** When the installation finished, do not press "Continue" to reboot the machine, but instead choose "Go Back" and then in the main menu choose to execute a shell. In the shell type the following command to enable serial console (needed e.g. for boot console on GSP):
 
** When the installation finished, do not press "Continue" to reboot the machine, but instead choose "Go Back" and then in the main menu choose to execute a shell. In the shell type the following command to enable serial console (needed e.g. for boot console on GSP):

Revision as of 09:19, 27 February 2015

Installation of PA-RISC Linux

HPPA became an officially supported Debian architecture in release 3.0 (woody) and was dropped as of stable release 6.0 (squeeze). That's the reason that the latest available official installation CDs are available for Debian 5.0 (lenny) only.

The Debian ports project hosts a parisc version of debian unstable. Today the recommended installation of a new parisc machine is via the debian-ports unstable respository at http://debian-ports.org as described in the following section.

If you want to install debian the hard way with many manual steps, you can read the instructions at Debian_Ports_Installation_Manual.

Installation of Debian unstable via debian-ports repository

The latest installation medias for Debian unstable is available at either one of the following locations:

  1. http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hppa/debian-8.0/
  2. http://backup.parisc-linux.org/debian-cd/
  3. http://parisc.osuosl.org/debian-cd/

In those directories you find (you need to download only one of those):

  • lifimage file, used for tftp/netbooting the installation
  • debian-8.0-hppa-NETINST-1.iso, ISO image to burn to a CD/DVD for booting
  • debian-8.0-hppa-CD-1.iso, full ISO image with all packages for booting via CD/DVD

Installation instructions

  • Instructions to burn the ISO image on a Mac: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5132196
  • IMPORTANT: If your machine has a DVD-drive, you should better burn the image to a DVD disc. The first-generation DVD-drives in some older PA-RISC machines may have problems booting from e.g. a CD-RW so you may get this error message: IPL error: bad LIF magic.
  • Those images should work on all machines, with 32- and 64bit kernels. Installation of a C8000 workstation needs to happen via serial console since the install image will not activate the ATI graphics card. After installation the ATI cards will work in non-accelerated mode though.
  • If your machine is behind a firewall, enter the proxy at the IPL command line the Linux kernel command line (change parameter 7):
  mirror/http/proxy=http://proxy:8080   (adjust the proxy settings to your need and drop the underscores)
  • Choose the automatic disc partitioning, unless you know all details about disc partitions for PA-RISC (e.g. PALO bootloader needs ext2).
  • The palo bootloader needs to reside on a SCSI disc. The installer will detect SATA discs and will not complain if you install to a SATA disc!
  • At the "Software selection" screen,
    • for the debian 7.0 disc: do not enable any software other than "SSH server" . You can install additional software later!
    • for the debian 8.0 disc: You can choose to install the KDE-, LXDE-, MATE- or Xfce desktops, SSH, web- and print server. Do not choose to install the GNOME desktop since it will fail (we are still having problems to compile a recent-enough iceweasel on hppa!).
  • for the debian 7.0 disc:
    • When the installation finished, do not press "Continue" to reboot the machine, but instead choose "Go Back" and then in the main menu choose to execute a shell. In the shell type the following command to enable serial console (needed e.g. for boot console on GSP):
   echo "T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100" >> /target/etc/inittab
    • Type "exit" to quit the shell and return to the main menu.
    • In the main menu choose to "Finish the installation" and let it reboot the machine.

Notes:

  • After reboot the sshd daemon will not accept password-logins for root. You need to log in as the user which you created during installation and then become root via "su -". To change this sshd behaviour, edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and change the value of PermitRootLogin to yes (not recommended!).
  • After reboot, run apt-get install debian-ports-archive-keyring to receive the latest debian ports archive keys (avoids this warning: W: GPG error: http://ftp.debian-ports.org unstable InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY AA651E74623DB0B8 or A53AB45AC448326E)
  • We are happy to hear from you, if you installed PA-RISC Linux on your machine. Please send us a short mail to debian-hppa@lists.debian.org. Thanks!

IMPORTANT NOTE (only for the debian 7.0 installer image)

  • NEVER install the policykit-1 package or another one which will give you the following warning. It will render your machine unbootable!
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  sysvinit-core
  • The debian 8.0 installer image does successfully installs systemd if you like.

Technical background

The installer images mentioned above pull the debian packages from the repositories at
(for debian-7.0): http://parisc.osuosl.org/debian/
(for debian-8.0): http://backup.parisc-linux.org/debian/
which contains only the minimal set of necessary files for installation.
This is realized by the preseed/url=http://parisc.osuosl.org/debian/preseed.cfg Linux kernel parameter which is hardcoded in the palo bootloader code in those images.
I would prefer to directly install from the official debian unstable repository at http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/ but this is not possible, because:
  1. The debian ports repository is a moving target, which means that the Linux kernel udeb packages which are needed by the kernel on the ISO/liffile may not be available any longer at a later date, and
  2. The debian ports repository is missing the http://parisc.osuosl.org/debian/palo-installer_0.0.15_hppa.udeb and http://parisc.osuosl.org/debian/partman-palo_20_hppa.udeb packages which are needed to install the palo bootloader during installation.
The iso images were created with debian-cd, File:Debian-cd.diff.gz is the diff which was used to build them.
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