kernel upgrade on Yellowdog

[Sean]

Paul Melson wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 10:44:37AM -0400, John R. Gargett wrote:
> > I recently attempted to upgrade the kernel on my Yellowdog ppc (Champion
> > Server 1.1) system to 2.2.14 from 2.2.6. Everything seemed to go well, but
> > 'uname -v' still reports the kernel version as 2.2.6 as does the login
> > prompt.
>
>         That's because it's still loading the 2.2.6 kernel
>         at bootup.  The bootstrap loader (yaboot, in this
>          case) hasn't committed any changes to the MBR or
>         wherever it's stored.  I don't have much experience
>         w/ PPC Linux (and even less w/ MkLinux), but Linux
>         is Linux.  <--- that should start a flamewar!

yeap it should. =) Lots of little changes between platforms, the most noteable
are the boot loaders. LILO -> x86, SILO -> Sparc/SUN, QUIK/BootX/Yaboot/ybin ->
PPC.

>
> > The hardware is a Beige G3 running at 333 MHz with a 10 Gig HD and 96 Megs
> > of RAM. The Yellowdog install is new. I downloaded the kernel from
> > kernel.org, followed the Linux kernel HOWTO, and moved the resulting files
> > to the /boot. The only difference I could tell was that the file created in
> > the 'make zImage' was zvmlinux instead of the vmlinux that was in /boot
> > previously. As a precaution I sym linked the zvmlinux to vmlinux.
>
>         OK, remove the symlink, because that won't work.
>         Look at your /etc/yaboot.conf file and check the
>         location of the boot image.  It'll be on the line
>         that begins `image=`  Make a backup of that file
>         (probably /vmlinux) by copying it to a new location.
>         Then copy your new kernel file to that filename,
>         paying no attention to the fact that `make` gave
>         it a different name.  Then run `ybin` and `reboot`.
>         That should be all it needs.  Pretty much the same
>         steps for an i386 kernel rebuild w/ LILO.

Honestly your almost better off grabbing a prebuilt kernel from the linuxppc
site (ftp://ftp.linuxppc.org/kernels/). Linus for some reason doesn't like the
PPC stuff and is rather slow to add the changes to the Linux kernel so chances
are the prebuilt kernels will have the latest patches in them (or you can grab
the source.) that pertain to the PPC architechure and chances are they are a few
versions behind the "standard" kernel, but most of that stuff is irrelevent to
your situation.

IIRC the version of yaboot has been upgraded significantly since the release of
the 1.2 champion server. You might want to update that and you might want to
consult the FAQ-O-Matic and the yaboot/ybin page http://www.linuxppc.org/ybin/
(which is a little out of date.) You shouldnt have too many problems with the
"new world" ROMs unlike the predecessors. I had some problems getting it to work
with the Biege G-3's.

One last thing. If your _dual_ booting, which I almost automatically assume you
are. You _might_ have the kernel stored in the system folder on the mac side in
a folder called something like "Linux Kernels" or just "Linux". I know BootX
does this and yaboot doesnt really care where the kernel is either. I kind of
gave up on yaboot for another day and went back to the more ancient bootx. And
also remember the magic ctrl-command-p-r keys at startup to zap the pram just in
case something gets a tad screwy with the pram settings or pull the battery =)

Sean