Re: How to switch to debian on a powermac G4?
Christian Lynbech on satellite wrote:
> However, besides missing the nice warm feel of a debian system, YDL is
> not suitable for the software in question, since that requires glibc
> 2.0 while YDL, like most other modern linuxes, comes with glib 2.1 (or
> is 2.2, but not compatible), and my attempts at fixing that situation
> has so far failed miserably.
debian-powerpc linux uses glibc-2.1 too. I think it is currently glibc-2.1.3.
> I have the disk partitioned and set up, and the contents of
> disks-powerpc on the second partition, but since the G4 has no floppy
> disk I am a little lost on how to get the installation going.
Yep. It's a bugger isn't it.
> I tried burning a CD with the boot-...-hfs.img, but I cannot get the
> Mac to boot form that, if that was the intention.
If you have a zip disk then it is easier to boot from that.
> I also tried BootX (which seems like the best option), and this also
> boots into linux with the kernel supplied, but the boot hangs after
> the recognition of the drives (hda/hdc).
You can not use BootX on the G4. You must use yaboot.
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. I seem to so close, and that is
> really frustrating :-)
I would first recommend that you search the debian mailing list using keywords
such as "booting", "installing", "G4", etc. I think you only need to select the
year 2000 entries in the powerpc archives. There are lots of messages that will
answer your questions. Pay particular attention to Ethan Benson's replies. He
suggests making an 800K bootstrap partition, followed by your other Linux and
MacOS partitions. I didn't bother with MacOS at all.
Yaboot is an openfirmware program which can boot an OS from any partition. It is
the equivalent of lilo in the intel linux world.
To boot linux on the G4, I recommend copying the ramdisk image, bens latest
kernel (vmlinux-2.2.15pre14), base2_2.tgz, yaboot and yaboot.conf to the zip
disk. You can do this via an intel linux machine using hfsutils (hformat, etc).
Make sure you get the latest yaboot (version 0.6). Edit your yaboot.conf to load
linux from the zip disk. You can even add another entry to boot it from the root
partition.
Now to boot from the zip disk, insert it the drive and boot into the open
firmware prompt by holding down option-apple-o-f while the mac is booting (when
you here the chorus sound). Continue to hold down these 4 keys until you see the
open firmware prompt. To boot from the zip drive type "boot zip:,yaboot". If
that doesn't work, try "boot zip:,\\yaboot" or even "boot zip:1,yaboot" or "boot
zip:1,\\yaboot". This will run yaboot from the zip drive which will read the
yaboot.conf and boot from the appropriate partition based on the users input.
Another way I got the G4 to boot debian was to insert the linuxPPC CDROM and boot
from it. You can go to a virtual console or open an X terminal and then manually
unpack the base2_2.tgz image to your root partition. Setup yaboot and then you
are away. Don't forget to update the kernel to the lateset version
(vmlinux-2.2.15pre14) from Ben's web page (http://ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/).
Brendan Simon.
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