Re: confused by yaboot
John Murden wrote:
> I have aquired yaboot, but for the life of me can not figure what it is that
> I'm supposed to actually do with it. Any help would be MUCH appreciated...
>
> >> I'm having the same difficulties trying to install on an iBook running OS
> >> 8.6. And I'm using BootX 1.2b3.
> >
> > On the ibook, you should use yaboot.
> >
> >
yaboot is an Open Firmware native Linux bootloader. To use it, place yaboot_0.5
and the corresponding yaboot.conf files at the root level of your MacOS hard
drive (or on a bootable disk). If this is your first boot (that is, you are
installing Linux), you will also need the vmlinux.benh.15 kernel from
ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/ (click on "precompliled kernel").
to use yaboot, restart your machine into Open Firmware by holding down Command,
Option, O, and F at startup until you see a white screen with the "Welcome to
Open Firmware" message and the prompt:
0 >
At this point you will need some magic. Finding the appropriate incantation to
get OF to find yaboot is tricky on a non-stock machine. On my sawtooth G4, I
type:
boot hd:,yaboot_0.5
Your mileage may vary. yaboot will load adn give you a standard Linux boot:
prompt. Type the name of the appropriate image in yaboot.conf and the machine
should boot.
After installing, you should be able to place yaboot in its own partition using
the ybin utilities (I haven't done this yet, so I can't help here.)
How should the yaboot.conf file look? Well, here's what mine looks like:
image=hd:1,Linux-G4
label=install-linuxppc
initrd=hd:1,ramdisk.image.gz
initrd-size=8192
novideo
image=hd:1,Linux-G4
label=debian
initrd=hd:1,root1440.bin
initrd-size=8192
novideo
explanation:
image is the name of your kernel (in OF notation - /dev/whatever notation won't
work!)
label is name of this boot method
initrd is optional, and specifies the name of the boot ramdisk (for install
only)
initrd-size is the size of your ramdisk in memory (8192 seems to be standard)
novideo indicates that the kernel should use the Open firmware-initialized
video, rather than initializing video itself. Try it both ways and see how it
works.
This should be enough information to get you up and running...
Oh, and thanks to Ben Herrenschmidt for all his work on the Linux kernel for PPC
and getting it to boot. You've done a wonderful job!
Jason
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