[K12OSN] Almost there with G3 PowerMac clients. Need help with module error!

[Brad Smith]

Hi all,

I recently wrote this to the author of the "Nubus Powermacs as ltsp
clients) HOWTO, but it bounced back. So I thought I'd re-send here in
case he reads this list and/or someone else can help me out. Huge
thanks in advance to anyone who does!

NOTE: Thanks to some help from this list, I actually have these
systems booting YDL and accessing the ltsp server via X --query, but
I'm trying to take it the next step and get an actual nfs-rooted
system set up now.

--------
Hi Skip,

I'm doing some volunteer work for a local school who has a bunch of old
power mac G3/266 machines. I'm trying to breathe some new life into
these systems by setting them up as ltsp clients. However, since these
are apparently not "nubus" systems, the instructions in your HOWTO will
not work for them.

Of course, I don't expect you to go too far out of your way for an edge
case like this, but I'd like to take a moment of your time to let you
know what my situation is and see if you have any advice.

I'm not much of a mac person, but I can only assume that at some point
Apple radically changed the processor architecture that they used for
their systems because the Mach kernel you provide does not boot on these
G3s. Is my assumption correct?

Anyway, I have installed Yellow Dog 2.3 on the mac and compiled a custom
kernel (2.4.19) with root_nfs support. I would have expected that if
your kernel didn't run on my machine, the ramdisk you included would
also be incompatible, but this does not seem to be the case. Using my
kernel and your initrd the system boots, mounts /opt/ltsp/ppc from the
server and then does a pivot_root. After the pivot_root, however (and
so, I assume, once it starts using files on the server instead of the
ramdisk) things go downhill. 

I get an endless loop of:

failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s  -k binfmt-4c46, errno=8

At this point I'm a bit out of my element, not being a kernel person.
But from what I've read this implies that the kernel does not have
support for the requisite type of binary. However, if I boot that same
kernel with a local root, I can mount server:/opt/ltsp/ppc and run the
executables therein perfectly. I can do the same with the contents of
your ramdisk. 

So now, frankly, I'm just confused. =;) If you have any advice as to how
I might fix this problem, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. 

Thanks!
--Brad