Re: Installation super-woes on PowerBook 3400
hello,
So here's what I did:
I booted from the LinuxPPC 2000 CD. then on my P166, I gunzipped the
debian ramdisk.image.gz, mounted it, and got the mac-fdisk. I was rewarded
by a miracle: I could use mac-fdisk to create and WRITE the partition
map!!
Then I could use the LinuxPPC Xinstaller to install LinuxPPC.... but, now,
how can I boot without MacOS? yaboot isn't an option, this not being a
NewWorld machine. I heard/read about miboot, but never found any hard and
useful information. Where do I get it? How do I install it? Still bear in
mind that I have no MacOS, and no other way of booting my powerbook other
than with the LinuxPPC installation CD.
I know I have to create a /boot or /miBoot hfs partition for miBoot and
install a kernel there. Ok, that's done. what now?
Thanks,
Patrix.
On Tue, 5 Sep 2000, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 08:51:40PM -0400, Patrice LaFlamme wrote:
> > Hello *,
> >
> > I want to install debian (or any PPC Linux for that matter, I am
> > becoming very desperate) on my PowerBook 3400.
> >
> > LinuxPPC can't install because I can't partition my hard drive.
> > Debian can't install because (why oh why???????????) the CD isn't
> > bootable! (at least, the binary-powerpc-1.iso I just downloaded).
>
> the CDs are only bootable on `newworld' powermacs (and PreP i think)
> oldworld bootable CDs would require alot of extra bootstrap code to be
> written. Debian will not use and rely on non-free software to build
> its CD images.
>
> > A little info: it is a powerbook3400, with a 12x cdrom and no floppy
> > drive. I installed a new 4GB hard drive (removing the older 1.4GB one),
> > and have no MacOS media to reinstall and repartition.
>
> this is bad, you need either a macos installation or a floppy drive to
> boot your system into dbootstrap, period. (or an existing quik booted
> linux install)
>
> > I've been trying to get Linux on this for more than a month. pdisk (in
> > LinuxPPC 2000) can't partition the hard drive (it came from a
> > NetWinder - PC-style partitions.. but still, it should be able to,
> > shouldn't it? I can create the partitions in pdisk - even though it
> > only sees mny 1st of 4 GBs, but I can't write the partition map! WHY??),
> > and I have no other way of partition.
>
> you need to create a new empty partition table first, to do this you
> need to use the `i' command in mac-fdisk (mac-fdisk in debian will do
> this, i have seen other versions of pdisk such as linuxppc's that
> won't touch the disk unless it already has a valid mac partition
> table)
>
> the only problem with debian's mac-fdisk is it often miscalculates the
> number of blocks on the disk, so you should find that info yourself
> (look in /proc/partitions, find the number next to the device, say
> hda, and double it, to get the correct number of 512 byte blocks.)
>
> > So I need suggestions on how to install.
>
> well i see a couple problems here:
>
> 1) no floppy drive which means no means to use the debian boot
> floppy.
>
> 2) no macos which means you MUST use quik.
>
> i don't think you can install LinuxPPC 2000 on this machine this way,
> even if you can boot the CD you cannot make it bootable from the hard
> disk since LinuxPPC 2000 does not have a working quik. (they insist on
> BootX or miboot, but miboot requires that MacOS drivers be present on
> the disk and for that you need to use the Apple partitioning tool)
>
> the only other option i can think of is netboot but im not sure if the
> firmware on that machines supports it (or if it purports to support it
> whether its totally broken support)
>
> unfortunatly oldworld hardware is really a bitch to bootstrap without
> macos, newworld hardware is a different story you don't need macos for
> anything from bootstrap to install to hard disk bootability.
>
> can you get a floppy drive for this machine? i know they made an
> external drive for them. could you possibly install this disk into
> another powerpc box already running GNU/Linux and then install the
> debian kernel and root image, install quik and then reinstall the disk
> back into the powerbook?
>
> --
> Ethan Benson
> http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
>
http://www.patrix.org
"You can have Peace, or you can have Freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at the same time." - Robert A. Heinlein
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