The ol' Linux-on-Linux

[Dan Potter]

Thanks, everyone, for all the great work that's gone into Mac-on- 
Linux! I've gotten both OSX 10.3 and OS9 to work pretty flawlessly  
under it. I've run into a brick wall though. :)

My concept was to turn a Mac into a mini-mainframe by running an OSX  
file server and two Linux virtual machines under MOL. Based on the  
docs and included config files, it would seem that it's pretty  
simple. But I'm finding that that's not the case. And after about 3  
hours worth of Googling I've found no real hints on how to proceed,  
or even that anyone else has been successful with this. :( Does  
anyone even use MOL this way? Or is Linux-under-MOL more of a toy  
right now?

So here is what I've tried so far:

- Copied the "native" kernel (2.6.8) to a separate place to use with  
MOL.

- MOL 0.9.70 debian PPC packages: no amount of fiddling with the  
configs will make this get past the "Invalid ELF file /vmlinux" error  
in yaboot when trying to access my the kernel image. I even tried an  
older yaboot since one is listed in the molrc.linux file, but no change.

- Same as above, but I tried a suggestion of swapping the linux and  
linux.old oftree files. Now it gets to the PPC pre-boot screen, but  
doesn't actually start booting (penguin graphic, etc)

- MOL 0.9.71-pre1, just pulled from rsync a few minutes ago. After  
about an hour of struggling to compile it, I've gotten it to work  
(without any network modules though... those are still problematic).  
I was extremely pleased to see it fly right through yaboot, and even  
the linux pre-boot screen, and display a discolored penguin in the  
corner. But I see no text on the screen, and the mol host process is  
sitting at 100% CPU usage.

I've seen periodic questions about Linux-on-MOL on this list and  
other places. Have any of you who've tried it ever gotten it to work?  
Anyone have any tips at all on where to go next? I'm no stranger to  
low level C coding, so if there's something I can do to help patch  
this up I'd be happy to give it a shot. The only hint I have right  
now is that a Linux kernel booted under MOL must have some patches  
from BitKeeper installed in it (the ldev tree?), and maybe that's  
what's needed to make it go.

Anyway, thanks for any advice!