yaboot errors on g4

[Brendan J Simon <Brendan.Simon@ctam.com.au>]

I finally went out and bought linuxppc (AUS$15) and yellowdog (AUS$15)
disks so I can boot into Linux.  I don't plan on installing either, I
just wanted a boot disk so I could untar the debian base2_2.tgz file and
then use apt.

I downloaded ybin (0.11), yaboot (0.5) and hfsutils and managed to
install them on a 800K HFS bootstrap partition (yes it is the first
partition, well 2nd partition after the partition table itself).

I get an error message saying "can't read config file" so I can't load
linux.  I can't press tab as the config file was not read.  I have tried
putting in commands manually at the boot: prompt.
eg.
"boot: hd:4,/boot/vmlinux ro"
but I get the following error
"Image not found...... try again"

What am I doing wrong ?
How can I get debian to boot ?
I can't even get the LinuxPPC installation to boot of the hard disk.

Thanks,
Brendan Simon.