PPC Installation Issues

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Booting of the Installation CD/DVD

CD1 is bootable on all NewWorld G3/G4/G5 Macs, IBM RS/6000 and pSeries, and also on PReP systems.

To boot a Mac from CD1 press the "C" key. If your Mac does not respond, or just boots into your MacOs restart your Mac again and hold the option, command, shift and backspace key simultaniously. This will force the Mac to start from CD.

To install on an OldWorld Mac, use BootX (from http://penguinppc.org/~benh/ ). To install on IBM iSeries or i5 systems, boot the Network Server configured for the linux install from the CD1/ISERIES64 file as *STMF.

yaboot will automatically pick up the correct kernel for your machine.

Harddrive Partitioning

YaST had no hard drive partitioning support on Apple PowerMacs until SuSE Linux 10.1. Everything had to be done manually.

YaST did always support partitioning on IBM's i/pSeries.

If you need to partition your disk before the installation, you can always start the installation with start_shell and then you'll get a shell in the installation system where various tools are available.

• Check PPC Partitioning for information on this topic

opensuse 10.2 : Music, MP3 and Samba on PPC, G4

The opensuse installation is - probably on purpose - too broken to play music. It does most out of the box, but they must have issues with some singers, because they are not helpful.

I managed to get it playing though. After hours of work. You can do it after a few minutes.

1. Do not try to add repositories to get the right files. Yast is terribly slow, and the right ppc packages are not there. Just believe me. I tried for days - weeks - to add more repositories to no avail, Yast is too slow, and hangs, and in the end... there is nothing there for ppc. Even no Java 1.5.

2. in principle, I am against the command line. But, in the end I tried: - download the source of Lame and xinelib1. You find them on the homepage of xine. - follow the instructions in the read me file after unpacking the package (just rightclick on the package and follow instructions to unpack). - install from source with the commands ./config, make and make install or something. just read the instructions.

this is all together 10 minutes work.

3. the volume does not work. you must install kmix from the cd with the main installation. Why it is not included in the initial install, heaven knows.

4. reading from a samba network in amarok, it says an mp3 is a stream instead of a file and does not work. - install smb4k - find somewhere in the setup cifs or smbfs and just change to cifs. - read the files form the disks mounted by SMB4K

Thats' all. If you ever find this page, what took me 3 weeks you can do it in one hour.

PS: Packman for PPC was recently updated for 10.2, might work

Bootloader Installation with SuSE Linux 10.0

There was no support to install the bootloader automatically during installation, nor was there anything to repartition your hard disk on PowerMacs (within YaST). To workaround this, first you need to do the installation (with some special steps), then you need to reboot the installation kernel and choose to boot the installed system, and finally you need to configure the installed system.

First, during the install at the main YaST menu choose to Change Booting. Then select Boot Loader Installation and then Do not Install any Boot Loader. Continue the rest of the install until it reboots.

Once the packages are copied, the system will reboot. Since you don't have a bootloader, you need to boot off your installation kernel again (either your CD drive or network source). Once there, boot to linuxrc.

Inside linuxrc you can specify to boot the installed system - select option 4 (Start Installation or System) and then option 2 (Boot Installed System). Select the correct root partition and it'll boot up and continue the second stage of the install.

Note: if you previously had something installed on this system you might end up with a (to Open Firmware) bootable partition, but then no config file for yaboot. In that case you might need to select in Open Firmware where to boot.

Once you're in the installed system, create a /etc/lilo.conf. This is a simple one on a pSeries:

 boot=/dev/sda1 
 timeout=100 
 default=linux 
 activate 
 
 image=/boot/vmlinux 
       initrd=/boot/initrd 
       label=linux 
       append="root=/dev/sda3 quiet sysrq=1"

My system has a PReP partition on sda1, swap on sda2, and root on sda3. The just run 'lilo' - a script that will setup yaboot for you - and reboot to test.

Here's a more involved Mac example lilo.conf:

 boot=/dev/hda9
 timeout=100
 default=linux
 activate

 image=/boot/vmlinux
       initrd=/boot/initrd
       label=linux
       append="root=/dev/hda11 resume=/dev/hda10 quiet sysrq=1"

 other=/dev/hda8
       label=macos

Adjust the example for your system, use pdisk -l to see what partition layout exists:

pdisk -l /dev/hda

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
 #:                type name                length   base     ( size )
 1: Apple_partition_map 'Apple          '       63 @ 1
 2:      Apple_Driver43*'Macintosh      '       54 @ 64
 3:      Apple_Driver43*'Macintosh      '       74 @ 118
 4:    Apple_Driver_ATA*'Macintosh      '       54 @ 192
 5:    Apple_Driver_ATA*'Macintosh      '       74 @ 246
 6:  Apple_Driver_IOKit 'Macintosh      '      512 @ 320
 7:       Apple_Patches 'Patch Partition'      512 @ 832
 8:           Apple_HFS 'Macintosh HD   ' 13365743 @ 1344     (  6.4G)
 9:           Apple_HFS 'Ohne Titel 2   '   345453 @ 13367087 (168.7M)
10:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 'Swap           '   489513 @ 13712540 (239.0M)
11:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 'A/UX Root      ' 39262257 @ 14202053 ( 18.7G)
12:          Apple_Free 'Extra          '       10 @ 53464310

In this example, hda9 is a small HFS partition (not HFS+), hda8 is your MacOS installation.

Run /sbin/lilo as root to write the bootloader to disk and adjust the boot-device variable in OpenFirmware NVRAM.

Trackpad not working on iBooks/PowerBooks with built-in USB keyboard

Newer iBook and PowerBook models use an USB keyboard and trackpad. While the keyboard always worked, support for the trackpad was added for SuSE Linux 10.1. Unfortunately, the appletouch driver was not added to the inst-sys. Ooops...
As a result, the trackpad can not work during the first part of the installation. Use the keyboard shortcuts to navigate: Applekey + underlined char. Or attach an external USB mouse.

Wrong Colors on Some PowerBooks with 10.0

On some PowerBooks with a nVidia graphic chip (like the 12" G4 PowerBook) you will realize completly broken colors while booting and installing from the first CD. When the installation goes on with the second CD or even later in the installed system X11 works fine.

For now the easiest way to avoid this is to boot with the parameter "textmode=1", which will present you the textbased YaST for the first part of the installation.

Installation crashes on 1st generation iBook and iMac

There is a bug in the ATI Mach64 kernel framebuffer device driver that leads to a crash once the Xserver starts in the installation system. The symptom is a white cursor in the upper left corner and a dead Mac.

2 workarounds exist to do an installation on these systems:

• uses the textbased YaST, at the yaboot boot: prompt type

install textmode=1

• try to use the native ATI Xorg driver during install, this will most likely work on the iBook. At the yaboot boot: prompt type

install acceleratedx=1

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