Booting on PowerMac (OldWorld)

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Boot into the Installer

The CD does not boot on an Oldworld Mac, because we cannot include the required drivers for legal reasons. Use BootX to pass control from the running MacOS to the Linux kernel. Download BootX from:

• http://penguinppc.org/~benh/

Uncompress it with StuffIt Expander. This has the folder 'Linux Kernels'. Copy the files 'initrd32' and 'linux32.gz' into this folder. Unfortunately, linux32.gz must be uncompressed before BootX App can use it. Use either StuffIt Expander or MacGzip to uncompress it:

• http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/general/gente/spd/gzip/

There are many other tools listed at http://www.pure-mac.com/compen.html.

Launch 'BootX App' and select the kernel and initrd. The kernel 'vmlinux-2.6.13*-default' is probably already selected. In the 'Options' menu, 'Choose' the initrd32 file. The value in the 'Ramdisk size:' field will be ignored by the kernel. Usually no kernel arguments are required for the installation. You may want to pass 'textmode=1' to the installer to save a few bytes of memory during installation or if the kernel has no support for your video card. Click 'Save to prefs' to store the settings permanently, then click Linux to take control away from MacOS and pass it to Linux.

Boot into the Already Installed System

After the package installation, a reboot is required. Launch 'BootX App' again, start the installation, but instead of 'New Installation', choose 'Boot into installed system'. Continue with the installation and system configuration. Then log in as root. You must copy the file /boot/initrd to a MacOS partition. Use either hfsutils to copy the file:

hmount /dev/sda7
hls -la
hcopy /boot/initrd :
humount

or mount it as a regular file system:

mount -t hfs /dev/sda7 /mnt
ls -la /mnt
cp /boot/initrd /mnt/initrd
umount /mnt

Instead of '-t hfs', use '-t hfsplus' if the partition is HFS+. hfsutils cannot be used on a HFS+ formatted volume. Reboot again into MacOS to configure the BootX Extension. Drag the file '* Boot Extension' onto your System folder. It is then copied automatically to the Extensions folder. Run BootX App and choose the copied file 'initrd' as RAM disk. Create an alias of the folder 'Linux Kernels' in the System folder. Its name must also be 'Linux Kernels'.

Reboot MacOS. The BootX Extension will appear and you can choose either MacOS or Linux. To change the default OS, press tab to switch between the two.

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