Re: PPC Problems

[Sebastiaan <S.Breedveld@ITS.TUDelft.NL>]

High,

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Jamie McLaughlin wrote: 

> I have a question regarding the installation of Linux on an Apple
> PowerBook running a G3. 
> 
> I read through the "Installing on a PowerPC" but did not find any
> information on how to make Linux the ONLY OS on the computer.  I do not
> want OS9.x on it, I need Linux.  I have had many problems with booting
> to a different OS.  Once the boot disk is gone there is no way to get it
> back. 
> 
> I guess my question would be "How do I install Linux on a PowerBook G3
> without having to dual boot?" 
> 
> I hope there is some good news for this. 
> 

Please wrap your lines at 72 chars. Thanks.

I have done this with an 'old style' power mac, but the new style work
somewhat different. I found the answer in the Yellow Dog Linux
documentation (www.ydl.com, chapter 6.9-6.10). This is more ore less what
you  should do:
use yaboot as your boot loader, and boot into the open firmware of your
mac (command+option+o+f during bootup). There type:
setenv boot-device hd:,\\yaboot

(you can view the other variables by typing 'printenv'). Then type 'boot'
to boot into yaboot and from there into Linux. Be aware that every time
MacOS is loaded, the OF resets to default (damned mac's). You can also
reset it manually by pressing command+option+p+r.
Also, by default the input/ouput for OF is serial, so you need a program
that runs under MacOS to redirect the i/o to keyboard/screen. More info
about OF and Linux can be found at www.netbsd.org->powerpc.

There is also some info at:
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ybin/

It is also a good idea to subscribe to debian-powerpc. There are the
people with powerpc experience.

Greetz,
Sebastiaan