Booting on PowerMac

From openSUSE

back to boot

Booting from the CD

CD1 is bootable. Hold down the 'C' key after the start-up sound. If CD1 does not boot, try to boot it from the OpenFirmware command line. Reboot and hold down the 'Apple + Alt + O + F' keys after the start-up sound until the prompt appears. Type ' cd:,\\yaboot ' to load the boot loader. If this fails, the CD is probably badly burned. If the CD can be mounted in Linux or MacOS, copy the boot files to your hard disk.

In MacOS, copy the folder 'suseboot' to your small HFS boot volume. During reboot, hold down the 'Alt' key to get a list of bootable volumes. Select the one with the little penguin.

In Linux, copy the files CD1/suseboot/initrd32 and CD1/suseboot/linux32.gz to your root partition and add it to the active boot loader config file. Do not forget to uncompress the kernel with gunzip. On a G5, use the files initrd64 and linux64.gz. Hint: on OpenSUSE 10.3 the files (linux32.gz, initrd32) can be located on CD2 or CD3.

Boot via Network

Copy the files yaboot, yaboot.cnf, and inst32 from CD1/suseboot/ to your /tftpboot directory. On a G5, use the inst64 file instead. Rename yaboot.cnf to yaboot.conf. yaboot only looks for yaboot.conf on network devices. Reboot and go to the OpenFirmware prompt. Type boot enet:1.2.3.4,yaboot to load the file from the server. The Mac will grab an IP from the DHCP server in your local network. If you need a static IP, use this command instead:

boot enet:1.2.3.4,yaboot,4.3.2.1;255.255.255.0,;1.2.3.1

1.2.3.4 is the server IP
4.3.2.1 is the client IP of your Mac
1.2.3.1 is the gateway

Boot Loader Configuration in the Installed System

PowerMacs use the yaboot boot loader to provide a list of configured kernels during start-up and to load the kernel and initrd from the hard disk or over the network. To reduce the hassle of configuration, a wrapper script 'lilo' exists to generate a yaboot.conf file suitable for your setup. lilo uses a simple config file /etc/lilo.conf that contains a list of kernels, the boot partition, and the MacOS installation. An example config:

# wait 10 seconds for user input
timeout=100
# kernel to boot when no user input was given
default=linux
# update the firmware boot-device variable
activate
# small Apple_HFS partition
boot=/dev/hda7

# kernel ELF binary
image=/boot/vmlinux
       label=linux
       initrd=/boot/initrd
       # kernel cmdline options
       # resume= for suspend-to-disk
       # quiet to surpress the useless kernel messages
       # sysrq= to allow backtrace when things go downhill
       append="root=/dev/hda8 resume=/dev/hda9 quiet sysrq=1"

# MacOS partition
other=/dev/hda6
       # this label can also be the default=
       label=macos

If you can't find lilo.conf in your /etc folder, create an empty document and paste the above code (or any variation of it) and save as lilo.conf in your /etc folder.

Run /sbin/lilo from shell as a super user to make lilo read the .conf file and set up the configurations you entered.

• For each change you make in the above file, you have to run /sbin/lilo again

• If lilo complains like this: "hmount: /dev/hda7: not a Macintosh HFS volume (Invalid argument)" it may be that your boot partition (hda7) is not HFS but HFS+. You can fix this by doing "hformat /dev/hda7".

Partition Types to Use

The OpenFirmware only loads boot files from HFS partitions. The disk needs a 'mac' label. The partition type of the boot partition must start with 'Apple_HFS' or with 'Apple_Boot'. The latter won't be shown within MacOS.

back to boot