Installing debian on a new PowerBook G4

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

Hi all,

I've just received a new PowerBook G4 15" from Terra Soft Solutions, but
since they were currently having trouble getting YDL on it, they sent it
to me ahead of time and will send me the YDL CDs later. (that's a bad
sign!)

Being impatient, and the fact that all my x86 machines have Debian on
them, I decided to go ahead and try to install Debian on this first.  So
after spending several hours reading links on how to do this I gave it a
try.

Reading links like the following:

http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/tibook.html

http://people.debian.org/~branden/ibook.html

and of course:

http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/pmac

And a bunch of other googles.

I downloaded first the net install (figured I'd do that first).  I
repartitioned my box to have MaxOS X at the end, and gave a majority of
space to Debian.  But that really doesn't matter, since the install CD
couldn't find the CD drive.  I got passed yaboot, and into the installer
but right when it started looking for the CD it couldn't find it??

I then tried out the echt hdrive install, and it couldn't find the hard
drive.

I then downloaded the latest testing netinstall cd (put together today!)
and that had the same problems.

I noticed in all these that the screen on F4 showed messages like:

"Missing modules 'ide-core (Linux IDE support), ide-mod (Linux IDE
driver), ide-probe-mod (...), ide-detect (...), ide-generic (...),
eth1394 (...)"

I of course replaced the (...).

Well it did load the ide-disk and ide-cd, so perhaps those others are
built into the kernel.  And perhaps not, I'm too tired to see if those
are dependent on them.

Well, it's almost 2am here and I've spent way too much time trying to
get this to work.  So maybe Monday I'll see if I can make a iso image
with those modules (if they were not already compiled in).  Or perhaps
just wait for the yellow dog.

Anyway,  I thought I'd let others know of the troubles I'm having.  I'm
old to Debian, but new to Linux on a Apple.  (although I have ported
Linux to ppc, but those were just small SBCs that didn't have supper
proprietary drivers).

Cheers,

-- Steve