[ginoledesma]

After weeks of reading LinuxPPC2K mailing archives and surfing the net for information, I still can't figure out how to install LinuxPPC 2K on a G4/400 with Mac OS 9.0.4 installed.

The problem, as most say, is that because my hard disk has the OS 9.0.4 drivers installed, which BootX coughs at.

I've booted the LPPC2K CD, installed Linux on my second ATA hard disk, and tried rebooting to the LinuxPPC partition, but the OS stops with the hd(a)_sync problems.

A lot of guys pointed out to using yaboot instead of BootX. But how do you install Yaboot if you can't even get into Linux?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hiya,

You might try this page:
http://www.linuxppc.com/news/macos9/

It's somewhat outdated at this point, but it may be helpful. Also, if you can boot from the CD, your computer is in Linux. You can open a terminal window (a command-line interface) to type in commands, if you know what they are.

Also, if you bought a CD from us, have you e-mailed support? We have people that answer support mail again. ;-)

Cheers,

Jason Haas, LinuxPPC Inc.

[ginoledesma]

Thanks for tur URL...

I'll be going over the docs once more over the weekend to install LPPC.

[ginoledesma]

I visited the URL about Mac OS 9 but I've tried the instructions before.

BootX will simply not work with my set-up, so I need yaboot.

I can try booting off the CD, mount my partitions somewhere, and then install yaboot from there.

Hopefully that should work.

I'm not sure if this will help - I'm a veteran of a whole 3 days with LinuxPPC 2000- but this (or domething else I'm not aware of) worked for me.
Two drives (both SCSI). First drive has several volumes, one with 9.0.4 (my main OS) another with OS8.6.
I used Drive Setup from 9.0.4 to get the correct Apple Unix (PPC preferred) partitions on the second drive. I then booted into 8.6 and downgraded the drivers on the Linux drive to 1.7.3.
Linux then installed and I'm able to use Boot-X at startup.
System: Umax s900, Powerlogix G3, 176 MB ram

[ginoledesma]

My system came pre-installed with Mac OS 9.0.2, and I've no copy of Mac OS 8.6. Also, running Drive Setup 1.7.x under Mac OS 9.x doesn't work. So that options out for me.

[Gregory]

There is always "down and dirty" pdisk, or FWB HDT*PE ($20) or the next LinuxPPC 2000 bundle.

I upgraded my HDT hoping it was better and easier than Drive Setup which really does look to do a great job - Drive Utility 1.0 (part of OS X) has a "non-working" Drive Setup that has some dynamic features, once it gets updated (9.1 also?).

Getting the partition maps is a big hurdle. Trying to put a Mac OS Boot, root, usr, swap, home on same drive as 9.0.4 and OS X was too challenging. Stuck an older SCSI on Adaptec 2930CU (bootable) and putting Linux there - until I can figure out how to put it on PCI ATA Tempo card - the SCSI is 4x slower.

I think OS X will "get there" before Linux is easy to install and use and support the Pro k/b and mouse, no?

Gregory

[ginoledesma]

I think so, too. But LinuxPPC and other Linux Mac porting companies are doing a great job of brining a true open source platform to the Mac.

[Gregory]

I tried to buy SuSe Linux from their web site but it "choked" and couldn't complete the order. Went to MacZone Linux eStore and they had one flavor of Linux and it wasn't for the PPC (green box instead of blue).

Now I'm waiting for the next LinuxPPC 2000 to ship. Maybe that'll work, but it's also possible in these things that the forth coming Mac OS 9.1 will "break" it in some way, too, just like the rewrites in 9.0.4 did to software, and 9.0 before it, so that it has been "upgraditis" for the last year.

Gregory

[ginoledesma]

Here is what I did recently:[*]Read the September 8, 2000 Update Docs on the LinuxPPC Site[*]Repartitioned my Primary Slave 1.5GB ATA HD into 50MB HFS LinuxPPC Boot, 1.3 GB / partition, and 128MB Swap partition[*]Successfully installed LinuxPPC onto the second hard disk (/dev/hdb4)

Problem:[*]Cannot boot into Linux because of a:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:01

I've already added the append = "root = /dev/hdb4/" line to my yaboot.conf file, but still no go...
Sigh!

Update:
I've just changed over to a new G4/400 and will soon be giving LinuxPPC2000 a try on this machine. I'm going to use the method outlined in this link: http://oreilly.linux.com/pub/a/linux.../linuxppc.html

It's a way to install a dual boot/dual hard drive configuration on a G4.

Anybody familiar with it ?

[ginoledesma]

Muddy, Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You very much for that link. I've found out the root cause of all my problems:

append = "root = /dev/hdb4/"

That line in the yaboot.conf file is wrong. It should read

root = /dev/hdb4

Again, thank you very much.

Mr. Jason Haas, you might want to consider updating the FAQs/documentation at your site.