[fireteddy]

Through various quirks/unnecessary punishments of fate, my G4 PB has no optical drive. Though similar, opposite quirks, I own a 20" Core Duo iMac. Good! But now I've reached kind of a problem.

When I boot up the PB, it asks for a password box. No user/pass combination works. "Easy," I think, and start up in single-user mode and do the old

/sbin/fsck -fy (which claims the volume is OK)
/sbin/mount -wu /
/sbin/SystemStarter

but SystemStarter hangs when it gets to "CiscoVPN : loading cisco ipsec kernel module." and can't be coaxed any farther (unless I can get it to skip that somehow---the knowledge of how to do that is beyond me). So when I type in passwd root, nothing happens.

"No problem," I think. "I'll just target disk mode the PB, and run the installer from the iMac." So I put in the Tiger DVD (PPC Tiger 10.4.0), and hold down alt booting up the PB. The only thing in the source list I get is the PB HD; no option to boot from the iMac drive (for obvious reasons) but also no option to boot from the iMac optical drive.

So... what do I do?

[Darthmaul4114]

if you want to start the PB in target mode you hold down T, not alt. my roomate installed tiger on a powerbook like that a few weeks ago. it should work.

[fireteddy]

Holding down T mounts the PB onto the iMac, which would be fine if I could boot from the PPC Tiger disc and then just install it onto the PB from there. But I can't

[ibook_steve]

To quote a line from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:

"You're going the wrong way!"

Put the iMac in TDM with the OS X disk already in it. Then boot the Powerbook holding down option. You should then get to choose where to boot from. Choose the OS X DVD mounted on the iMac and you should be good to go.

Steve