[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Paolo Marchiori]

Timothy Murphy, Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 02:32:05PM +0100:
> Sorry to break in on this high-minded discussion,
> but has anyone found linux on an Athlon64 machine slightly unstable?

Sorry for hijacking the thread a third time, but I'm encountering a strange
problem.

I have 2 IBM pSeries machines I want to run linux on. One is a 7026-B80,
single POWER3 processor; the other is a 7026-H80, 4x RS64-II processors
(basically the same cpu as the p3, minus the fpu). Both are 64-bit
machines, so this keeps the thread on-topic. Plus, I'm looking for
suggestion on Debian, which is the best linux distro.

*ducks*

The problem: linux on 64-bit pSeries is currently officially supported only
by SuSe. But for reasons of homogeneousity (?) I want to run Debian on
them. There isn't an official PPC64 complete userland out yet, but 32-bit PPC
should work fine. The problem is that 1) 64-bit pSeries need some special
compile flags on the kernel, 2) there isn't afaik a d-i system based on it
and 3) I don't have time to waste in preparing it since I'm only installing
two machines.

My technique has been:
* boot off a SuSe 9 rescue CD
* come to a shell, prepare the disks (raid, partition, lvm, format)
* debootstrap sarge/ppc
* install the bootloader + SuSe kernel and boot with the debian partition as root

This worked perfectly for the B80, which is up and running with 64-bit
SuSe kernel and 32-bit Debian userland since 87 days.

The *real* problem is with the B80: I repeated the same steps but the
debootsrap: I rsynced the userland from the other machine.

It boots the kernel, then freezes while loading init. The serial console
dies, the front panel stays stuck with its usual message (kernel version).
Tried booting the rescue again, chrooting and exec-ing /sbin/init... same.

Any suggestions?

p.
-- 
pbm - "I never criticize: I denigrate. It's different."
                                             (a friend)