[K12OSN] Getting eMacs to boot.

[Jon Harder]

Jim Kronebusch wrote
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:03:13 -0500 (CDT), Jon Harder wrote
> > > try XSERVER=fbdev for the hell of it..chuck
> > 
> > Same thing -- the login screen tries to display briefly, is cleared and
> > the process starts over again, indefinitely.
> > 
> > Is there a way to access a second text terminal window and find a log file
> > that might be helpful in showing what is going on? I'm feeling this is very
> > close to working and it is frustrating not knowing what to tweak.
> 
> You could set screen01 to be a terminal and then startx from the command line.
> This should let you view what is happening in a more intuitive way.

I did essentially the same thing by set the default run level to 3 in the
inittab file. Everything is fine up to that point. When I fire off the
startx it goes into an endless loop that I can't get out of without
restarting the client.

Is there a way to set up SCREEN_02 so I can alt-f2 or ctrl-alt-f2 to
a shell window while startx is running in the other one? Or is there a way
of firing off startx so it tries once and exits?  I'm not sure where
I would look to see if anything useful is being logged. Further
suggestions would be appreciated.

On the pre-slot loading front, I made some accidental progress. I
tried doing a vanilla install of Yellow Dog and it failed on the second
CD, forcing a reboot. Fortunately I had the iMac on the ltsp portion of
the network and it automatically found the server and booted up!

Evidently yaboot was installed on the imac and that is all it needed
to get on the network and then boot from the server. So my question is,
how do I go about installing just the basic yaboot software on those
old iMacs without going through the whole Yellow Dog install CD 1?

--
Jon Harder
Mountain Lake Public Schools