Re: [Sheflug] Booting Linux on "Old world" Macs

[fred dodd <fred.dodd [at] xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi James,


On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 18:12, James Wallbank wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> Are any of the assembled company dab hands with installing Linux on
> Macintoshes?
> 
> Here at Access Space we've recovered a load of G3's (233 mHz, but they
> run far faster than the equivalent Intel Chip because they're PPC chips
> - maybe they're the equivalent of 400-500 mHz boxes, so worth messing
> ith!).

Try

Mandrake ppc, yellow dog linux, debian ppc

> Anyway, we have no O/S on them at the moment, and while it legitimate to
> install the version of MacOS that they were supplied with (but no apps)
> some bright spark said "Why not install Linux?". I heartily agree.
> 
> However, these Macs just won't boot a Linux PPC install CD.

I have a debian sarge install on my mac powerbook g3
> They will boot MacOS CDs. I *think* that much more of the boot process is
> contained in firmware than with a regular PC, but I really don't know
> what's happening.

press the "c" key to boot to cdrom for newworld
> 
maybe you need to access the boot strap with special key press, will
give you then option to boot to cdrom, hd

> I *think* that the Mac BIOS loads the Mac Filesystem handler from
> firmware, which then MUST go to a Mac format partition and find the OS
> to boot... So effectively, the filesystem of the boot partition is fixed
> in the BIOS.
> 

see below:

ommand (? for help): p
/dev/hda
        #                    type name                 length   base    
( size )  system
/dev/hda1     Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
( 31.5k)  Partition map
/dev/hda2         Apple_Bootstrap untitled               3907 @ 64      
(  1.9M)  NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hda3         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled            7810548 @ 3971    
(  3.7G)  Linux native
/dev/hda4         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 tmp                  585938 @ 7814519 
(286.1M)  Linux native
/dev/hda5         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home                3593752 @ 8400457 
(  1.7G)  Linux native
/dev/hda6              Apple_Void                           0 @ 0       
(  0.0k)  Unknown
/dev/hda7              Apple_Void                           0 @ 0       
(  0.0k)  Unknown
/dev/hda8         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                 691471 @ 11994209
(337.6M)  Linux swap

> Is this right? Do we really HAVE TO install Macs as dual boot? 

no should be ok with linux ppc, should leave the boot strap
> I just
> want to get Linux on 'em, not an old version of MacOS cluttering up H/D
> space!

rgds

fred

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