On Sun, Mar 25, 2001 at 05:31:24PM +1000, adodo wrote: > Hello > > I am trying to install debian on my new powermac G4. It is a 533MHz with the > Geforce2 MX video card. > > The problem is for whatever reason, my debian cd will not boot on this > machine. I thought first that I had received a faulty cd, so I used the > pseudo kit and made my own official cd from my pc. My cd would not boot > either. probably the good ol `apple changed the machine id so the bootscript won't load' story again. fortunatly that will never happen again after potato r3. for now boot into OF (command option o f) and enter this command: boot cd:,\\yaboot you will probably need to enter `linux video=ofonly' at the yaboot prompt since nvidia video is quite poorly/unsupported under linux. > Debian is what I want ultimately on the machine, but just launching linux on > this machine has proved problematic. I tried YellowDog. It would boot up > into the installation program, but when I specified install from cd, the > machine stops with the initializing cdrom dialog on the screen. If I choose > install from hard drive the installation aborts complaining that it can't > find a shared library - I can't remember exactly which one. its possible the kernel does not support this varient yet. i have given up on keeping track of apples hardware revisions.... apples hardware isn't really any simpler then it used to be when we had all the goofy numbering schemes, the only difference is everything has the exact same model number. > I have seen various postings around the net saying that linux does not > support 2001 G4s yet. How do I identify whether my G4 is one of these? that nvidia card is a pretty good indication. > Is there a way that I can create some kind of custom linux installation cd > from a pc or my mac or a combination of the two? I have no floppy drive or > network, but I have plenty of hard disk space. you can build a bootable cd quite easily, you only need the kernel and bootloader and root.bin image on it, once its booted eject it and put the real debian cd in, everything should work as normal. (you will have to manually install your fixed kernel package) check the archives for my comments about building bootable CDs if you don't find them or need help let me know, its quite simple. what would be simpler is sticking a network card in your PC and booting the mac over the network. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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