Install Gentoo using PXE on POWER8

[gentoolinux]

Hello,

I am trying to install Gentoo on an IBM Power Systems S822 POWER8 server using PXE.
I have downloaded the latest ppc64le install image, copied the boot folder to my DHCP/TFTP server and configured the DHCP server to provide the file boot/grub/powerpc.elf.
I see the Welcome screen from Grub but than I get some disk not found errors before rescue mode is entered:

[pingtoo]

I don[t know ppc or grub will enough to help make correlation. However in your current condition I recognize it is not PXE issue any more.

You have successfully use PXE to boot strap a GRUB EFI executable. Now you are in GRUB territory.

I think the error you got was refer to not able to get grub.conf from a network location. (No disk yet because it does not know how/where to locate disk(s))

have you setup tftp to expose grub.conf? see grub network for detail.

[gentoolinux]

Hi pingtoo,

thanks for your response!
Unfortunately there is no request for a grub.cfg in the TFTP server logs. So it looks like Grub is failing at an earlier stage.

In the meantime I have extracted Grub from the latest Fedora netinstall image and it boots fine!
The grub binary from Fedora is noticeable larger than the one from the Gentoo image (2257080 vs. 100212 bytes).

So a workaround could be to take Grub from the Fedora image, replace the grub.cfg with the file from the Gentoo image and continue the installation.
However, it would be nice if Grub from the Gentoo image would work, too.

[Fe4unR]

as luck would have it i installed it on an s822 just last week but without pxe. worked fine except for: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8847788.html

[pingtoo]