"failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt-4c46, errno=8" booting G3 ltsp clients

[Derick Centeno]

Funny...I had looked just at that SAME page to discover the details
regarding what kind of cards the computers would use!

You are probably trying to install from YDL 3.0 cd's it may be to your
advantage to refer to the YDL FAQ page regarding installation problems
with those cd's.  Here's the link:

http://www.sharplabs.com:8668/space/start

Using the Macs as dumb-clients is a sad waste of potential and power. 
YDL works better at higher speeds, as does anything else, but it may
interest you that I'm doing fine running YDL 3.0 on a 233MHz Minitower.
And it's running a slew of things all the time which cannot be done
within OS 9.

Regarding kernels because you are in YDL 2.0 you could upgrade your
kernel and your other YDL apps via apt or apt-get. Then when the
upgrades have completed you can upgrade to yum and then let yum continue
the upgrade and installation process for you.  You will have to also
modify the yum.conf file so that things move optimally.  Again this is
covered in the YDL FAQ pages in detail.

You may be interested in just going a wee bit beyond what's expected and
network the Macs so they together are a supercomputer; this was done
interestingly enough by Macaddict and they published how it was done.
I don't recall the specifics but you can check their website
(www.macaddict.com) and ask them.  Of course universities have done
better and larger scale stuff but I recall the article being unique in
how little was needed to get it going.  

It's interesting that one of the earliest debates regarding Powerful
systems goes back to what every technical person has discussed since
(Steve) Jobs and (Bill) Gates first covered it.  Power in hardware or
Power as user based applications?  It is the same here and you alone
will know whether users will be happy being limited to a design which
can grow by orders of magnitude or not.

It's your party...

Regarding improving hardware issues you should check out Other World
Computing (www.macsales.com) or Compuvest (www.compuvest.com).  I've
done business with both companies and they are both knowledgeable,
inexpensive and are solid dealmakers.


On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 12:57, Brad Smith wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2004 12:18:21 -0400, Derick Centeno <aguilarojo@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Hi Brad:
> > Unfortunately for you Apple used that architecture in at least 4
> > different configurations: a laptop, an iMac,a Minitower.and a Beige
> > desktop model.  
> 
> For what it's worth, this is the beige desktop model. More info here:
> 
> http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/stats/powermac_g3_233_dt.html
> 
> > These different configurations should run OS9 I believe,
> > which also means that if you are going to use Yellow Dog on them you
> > should at least be using Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 and become familiar with
> > setting up BootX such that instead of booting into OS 9 you can lock the
> > boot procedure into booting into Linux only.
> 
> Thanks for the feedback. I had originally tried installing ydl3.0 but
> anaconda repeatedly froze and/or returned "out of memory" errors. This
> was still the case after I cannibalized some ram and gave the system
> 64 megs instead of 32 and ran the installer in text mode. YDL 2.1,
> however, installed without a hitch.
> 
> My current setup is this:
> 
> The drive is dual-booting, via BootX, between MacOS9.2 and YDL2.1, so
> bootX is set up and ready to go.
> 
> BootX is also configured to let me load a custom kernel with nfs_root
> support and an initrd that mounts a root partition from the ltsp
> server and then start an ltsp session. However, when I do this I run
> into the modprobe error I described in my original email.
> 
> The reason I am not just using YDL as a standalone OS is that these
> are 266mhz machines. With ltsp, I could build a much, much, faster
> terminal server and then use the power macs as dumb-clients to it,
> thus improving the user experience dramatically.
> 
> So, while I'm plenty-comfortable with adminning Linux systems, the
> problem at hand appears to be a kernel issue of some sort. Any insight
> into how to resolve it would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> --Brad
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