RE: Installation of Debian on iMac DV 400Mhz
The benefits of proof-reading BEFORE you send.
%s/Yaboot/BootX/g
Yaboot actually works just fine...
|--> -----Original Message-----
|--> From: Blundell Bernard
|--> Sent: 12 June 2001 14:20
|--> To: 'debian-boot@lists.debian.org'
|--> Subject: Installation of Debian on iMac DV 400Mhz
|-->
|--> Hi,
|-->
|--> I don't really know where to start, so forgive me if it
|--> looks as if I'm just "diving in" with a load of ramblings.
|-->
|--> I have recently freed up an iMac DV 400Mhz machine, and I
|--> was very keen to put Debian on it. I downloaded the CD
|--> images, burned them onto CD and printed off the
|--> installation instructions.
|-->
|--> To cut a long story short, I had an absolute nightmare. I
|--> have many years' experience with Debian (I am a very
|--> passionate advocate) on i386, but the PPC install
|--> completely stumped me.
|-->
|--> These are the things I had problems with:
|-->
|--> Partitioning - The "drive setup" tool under MacOS seems to
|--> be the only tool that everybody will have access to that
|--> succeeds in partitioning the drive correctly. The links to
|--> 'mac-fdisk' on the Debian installation pages are simply
|--> links to the man page, which is a terrible thing to do to a newbie.
|-->
|--> Booting from the CD-ROMs - simply does not work on my
|--> model of iMac, and I suspect that this will be the case
|--> for most iMacs that have undergone the firmware upgrade
|--> necessary for MacOS X or MacOS 9.1.
|-->
|--> Booting from Yaboot - Again, MacOS X/9.1 require a
|--> firmware upgrade and I think this prevents the Yaboot
|--> installer from working.
|-->
|--> Now I'm no big PPC-head, but I thought that Debian would
|--> be /easier/ to install on an iMac because of the more
|--> predictable nature of the hardware. I struggled for days,
|--> flicking between Debian installation instructions,
|--> Yellowdoglinux and linuxppc before I finally got the thing to work.
|-->
|--> Now, I have a lovely 192Mb 400MHz PPC with Debian
|--> 2.2(.latest, whatever that is). It asks as an always-on
|--> Postgresql server, squid proxy, apache + PHP web server.
|--> It's so quiet (no fan) and the aesthetics of an iMac in my
|--> house beat the pants of an ugly PC!
|-->
|--> What I'd like to do is offer a simple crib-sheet for other
|--> people to use - an installation "script" if you like. I
|--> can detail all the things I had to do, in the order I had
|--> to do them, and I'd mention tips and tricks that aren't
|--> mentioned in the existing Debian documentation (like
|--> booting from the CD in OpenFirmware).
|-->
|--> I've not got bags of time to spare, so the document would
|--> have to be "this is how to install Debian on an iMac DV
|--> 400Mhz with a slot-loading DVD". Fairly limited audience,
|--> but I think that there would be a non-trivial number of
|--> potential Debian users out there that gave up long before I did.
|-->
|--> Kind regards,
|-->
|--> Bern
|-->
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