Re: Getting Installation Instructions for an OldWorld Machine (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On 2008-09-13, Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 09 2008, Stephen Allen wrote: On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 07:45:21PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Congratulation on getting it working! That's great news. Thanks Rick for all your help ! Please, if you put it there, let me know where it is. The proper way to do things would be to merge the proper instructions in the Debian installation manual. Ok Rogério if you wish to add it to the Installation Manual you can get the copy from this URL: http://knol.google.com/k/stephen-allen/bootx-and-debian-ppc-on-old-world/39pxaft660cvn/6# N.B. I just 'dist-upgraded' to Lenny without any issues. Cheers, Steve -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newer cards on OldWorld machines (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On 2008-09-13, Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 12 2008, SDA wrote: Hm. I'm going to pull the Belkin USB 1.0 card I have in another G3 pizza box, and put in this one. I guess we'll see if Xorg handles it OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Please let us know how the card works. BTW, you probably would like to add something like a newer USB card like one of the cards listd here: FYI The Belkin 1.0 USB card works just fine. The system mounted my pendrive, automatically in Xfce4. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newer cards on OldWorld machines (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On 2008-09-14, SDA [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2008-09-13, Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 12 2008, SDA wrote: Hm. I'm going to pull the Belkin USB 1.0 card I have in another G3 pizza box, and put in this one. I guess we'll see if Xorg handles it OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Please let us know how the card works. BTW, you probably would like to add something like a newer USB card like one of the cards listd here: FYI The Belkin 1.0 USB card works just fine. The system mounted my pendrive, automatically in Xfce4. Following up to my post: Well I guess I spoke a little too hastily -- The scsi devices now don't work. If worst comes to worst I'll remove the USB card to scan/record. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Getting Installation Instructions for an OldWorld Machine (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On Sep 09 2008, Stephen Allen wrote: On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 07:45:21PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Congratulation on getting it working! That's great news. Thanks Rick for all your help ! Please, if you put it there, let me know where it is. The proper way to do things would be to merge the proper instructions in the Debian installation manual. Of course, a pure Free Software recipe would be better than having to rely on MacOS. I have an OldWorld PowerMac 9500/180MP with a G3 upgrade card (400MHz) that booted fine with quik. So I guess that it would be OK for you to mirror what you have working into a big HD and try to install with pure Free Software (you can get the packages that you have already installed with dpkg --get-selections and tell dpkg which packages should be installed with dpkg --set-selections, so that you don't miss anything). Please, help us support the PowerPC port better. Oh, and don't forget to install the popularity-contest package on your box, since this is used by the release team to know which architectures are worth releasing. (And the results are also used to order the packages on the Debian CDs). Now I can use my legacy scsi scanner on a modern OS. :-D That's one of the good things of a Free Software Operating System. Please, help to keep it alive for this arch. Regards, Rogério Brito. -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED],ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8 http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Newer cards on OldWorld machines (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On Sep 12 2008, SDA wrote: Hm. I'm going to pull the Belkin USB 1.0 card I have in another G3 pizza box, and put in this one. I guess we'll see if Xorg handles it OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Please let us know how the card works. BTW, you probably would like to add something like a newer USB card like one of the cards listd here: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.7598 http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4692 I hope this helps. Regards, Rogério Brito. -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED],ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8 http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Getting Installation Instructions for an OldWorld Machine (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On 2008-09-13, Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 09 2008, Stephen Allen wrote: Please, if you put it there, let me know where it is. The proper way to do things would be to merge the proper instructions in the Debian installation manual. Um OK. I could send you the copy in plain text to incorporate into said manual. Of course, a pure Free Software recipe would be better than having to rely on MacOS. I agree. I have an OldWorld PowerMac 9500/180MP with a G3 upgrade card (400MHz) that booted fine with quik. Interesting. Are you still using it, and how many times had it been rebooted ? I read somewhere (Quite possibly on the Debian site) that using Quik on Old World boxen, could lead to not being able to boot, quite possibly screwing the OpenFirmware in the process. So I guess that it would be OK for you to mirror what you have working into a big HD and try to install with pure Free Software (you can get the packages that you have already installed with dpkg --get-selections and tell dpkg which packages should be installed with dpkg --set-selections, so that you don't miss anything). At some point I may try, possibly with another G3 Old World. Please, help us support the PowerPC port better. Oh, and don't forget to install the popularity-contest package on your box, since this is used by the release team to know which architectures are worth releasing. Yup was installed from the beginning. 8-D (And the results are also used to order the packages on the Debian CDs). Now I can use my legacy scsi scanner on a modern OS. :-D That's one of the good things of a Free Software Operating System. Please, help to keep it alive for this arch. I'll do my best, despite not being a developer. Cheers, Stephen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newer cards on OldWorld machines (was: Re: G3 Beige Tower install help)
On 2008-09-13, Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 12 2008, SDA wrote: Hm. I'm going to pull the Belkin USB 1.0 card I have in another G3 pizza box, and put in this one. I guess we'll see if Xorg handles it OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Please let us know how the card works. BTW, you probably would like to add something like a newer USB card like one of the cards listd here: OK I'm only using a GUI on this G3 due to a scanning project I've undertaken for several weeks. Once that's done I'll be removing Xorg and running it as a headless server. So having an up-to-date USB 2.x isn't that important to me. Thanks for the suggestion however. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On 2008-09-10, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/10, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [ ...] Is your card different from stock ? Hi Risto, please excuse the delay in responding. This is of interest for me, too... it reminds me... My G3 is a desktop model (233 MHz, rev B) with integrated video: Rage II something, with 6 MB of RAM. Do the towers really have a separate PCI card? No, I was mistaken, it is indeed onboard. The video ram could be upgraded from, (If memory serves) the stock 2 Mb to 8 Mb. I added a 3rd party card, with dual head capability. Back in the day that was an expensive video card ! I installed Ubuntu 6.06.1, obviously in 2006, and it worked fine... until I put in a PCI card (USB 2.0). That caused xorg to fail. It complained about INVALID I/O ALLOCATION, but I'm not sure whether it is relevant to the problem. It seemed to try to allocate memory already used by the USB PCI card. I wonder if that bug has been fixed... Hm. I'm going to pull the Belkin USB 1.0 card I have in another G3 pizza box, and put in this one. I guess we'll see if Xorg handles it OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Another problem with this machine model is the text frame buffer mode not being usable because of vertical lines where the text 'lives'. Hm I didn't have this problem either. Stephen, what version of xorg are you using? Do you have other PCI cards installed than the video cards? 1:7.1.0-19 Actually all this is a bit aside from the original subject, maybe worth a thread of its own though... Aw go for it, install Xorg. 8-D -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/10, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 05:16:35PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: That's good news. I have tried to get xorg and gnome running on my test machine, but it seems that the video chip it has isn't very well supported. I need to open a bug report on the subject. I have 2 video cards in it. Back in the day when it was a workstation with dual heads. I left the stock video card in, (RageII 3d) with a whopping 8 mb/ram. It's this card that the Lenny installer picked up, not the dual head card. But that's OK. Is your card different from stock ? This is of interest for me, too... it reminds me... My G3 is a desktop model (233 MHz, rev B) with integrated video: Rage II something, with 6 MB of RAM. Do the towers really have a separate PCI card? I installed Ubuntu 6.06.1, obviously in 2006, and it worked fine... until I put in a PCI card (USB 2.0). That caused xorg to fail. It complained about INVALID I/O ALLOCATION, but I'm not sure whether it is relevant to the problem. It seemed to try to allocate memory already used by the USB PCI card. I wonder if that bug has been fixed... Another problem with this machine model is the text frame buffer mode not being usable because of vertical lines where the text 'lives'. Stephen, what version of xorg are you using? Do you have other PCI cards installed than the video cards? Actually all this is a bit aside from the original subject, maybe worth a thread of its own though... Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
* Dr. N.R. Helps Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit College of Life Sciences MSI/WTB/JBC Complex University of Dundee Dundee DD1 5EH Scotland t: 44 (0)1382 384745 (office) t: 44 (0)1382 388019 (lab) f: 44 (0)1382 388729 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://www.dnaseq.co.uk/ w: http://www.ppu.mrc.ac.uk Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/08/08 11:38 PM On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 10:41:09AM +0100, Nicholas Helps wrote: Hello Stephen / all, Hi Nicholas: So, here is the way I got it to work [ ...] Excellent instructions, thanks very much Nicholas ! I'm writing this from my G3 Beige booted into Lenny- Debian using mutt. :) I'm a happy camper. I think you have just written the best SxS I've ever seen. You should write technical manuals. The thing about updating the MacOS disk driver is all it took, and I was able to boot into the install I had done from yesterday. Yay !! Thanks to *Everyone* who helped here. Amazing that there are people around that remember the incantations one has to do to get these Old World boxen to work with a current Linux. Nicolas, do you mind if I add these instructions to the Debian Wiki ? I'll be sure to give full attribution. Cheers. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian- powerpc- [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello Stephen (and everyone else), Being polite this time ;-) Glad the step by step worked. Please make sure you acknowledge Rick as well, without this help, I would never have gotten my install working either The list works! Having read the other posts about the expert installer setting, I would add that in my experience setting the installer to expert did not allow me to avoid the installer trying to install quik. On older versions (eg Woody) even without putting the installer in expert mode one could stop this (and the install manual explained how). With Etch, the installer just pushed ahead regardless of what I tried to do to stop it. Fortunately, since quik does not work with ext3 file systems, it aborted. Hope you enjoy your new system. I have found Debian to run extremely well on these systems. Best wishes, Nick. The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish charity, No: SC015096 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 09:17:55AM +0100, Nicholas Helps wrote: Hello Stephen (and everyone else), Howdy Nicholas, Being polite this time ;-) Glad the step by step worked. Please make sure you acknowledge Rick as well, without this help, I would never have gotten my install working either The list works! Absolutely. I believe he has some additions for the SxS as well. Having read the other posts about the expert installer setting, I would add that in my experience setting the installer to expert did not allow me to avoid the installer trying to install quik. On older versions (eg Woody) even without putting the installer in expert mode one could stop this (and the install manual explained how). With Etch, the installer just pushed ahead regardless of what I tried to do to stop it. Fortunately, since quik does not work with ext3 file systems, it aborted. I consider this a bug. Perhaps I should file one then ? What's the best way to do this; reportbug ? Rick perhaps you can chime in here ... Hope you enjoy your new system. I have found Debian to run extremely well on these systems. Yes it is quite a bit snappier then MacOS X, and my SCSI Agfa scanner, just works. Xsane autoconfigured it ! -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sep 9, 2008, at 7:30 AM, Stephen Allen wrote: On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 09:17:55AM +0100, Nicholas Helps wrote: Hello Stephen (and everyone else), Howdy Nicholas, Being polite this time ;-) Glad the step by step worked. Please make sure you acknowledge Rick as well, without this help, I would never have gotten my install working either The list works! Absolutely. I believe he has some additions for the SxS as well. Having read the other posts about the expert installer setting, I would add that in my experience setting the installer to expert did not allow me to avoid the installer trying to install quik. On older versions (eg Woody) even without putting the installer in expert mode one could stop this (and the install manual explained how). With Etch, the installer just pushed ahead regardless of what I tried to do to stop it. Fortunately, since quik does not work with ext3 file systems, it aborted. I consider this a bug. Perhaps I should file one then ? What's the best way to do this; reportbug ? Rick perhaps you can chime in here ... I consider it a bug too! The expert mode hack allowed me to skip the install quik step, as I described in my previous email, but it didn't do any good; the object of skipping it was to allow OS9 to boot cleanly, but as reported, it's still necessary to do the refresh the disk drivers trick with the OS9 install disk. I was using Lenny beta2, and your tests were with Etch, if I remember. Maybe the barge forward and install the boot loader, even in expert mode mis-feature got dropped somewhere in-between? I'm planning to do some experiments to see just where the boot info gets clobbered -- when I get some time... (Sigh!) Hope you enjoy your new system. I have found Debian to run extremely well on these systems. Yes it is quite a bit snappier then MacOS X, and my SCSI Agfa scanner, just works. Xsane autoconfigured it ! That's good news. I have tried to get xorg and gnome running on my test machine, but it seems that the video chip it has isn't very well supported. I need to open a bug report on the subject. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 07:34:43PM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/8, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [ ...] The other IDE socket has probably the CD drive (hdc)? Maybe the spare drive has been as a slave in its earlier life? In Linux, hda/b are master/slave on primary ide bus, and hdc/d on secondary. Risto Hi again Risto: Nope, none of the jumpers were changed, as it turns out. The box has 2 CD drives, both scsi. The other IDE socket isn't used at the moment. I just saw an Ad on CraigsList today, for several bigger scsi drives at a great price, so I may be putting in some extra storage. :D Risto, as you've probably read by now; I've got the G3 Beige up and running with Lenny and even a window manager, (XFce4). This was due in large part to your help, the only missing link was furnished by Nicolas, in terms of applying the Apple disk driver again as the installer corrupted it. Once I did that, I was able to boot into Linux using BootX. Thanks for all your help ! -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 05:16:35PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: That's good news. I have tried to get xorg and gnome running on my test machine, but it seems that the video chip it has isn't very well supported. I need to open a bug report on the subject. I have 2 video cards in it. Back in the day when it was a workstation with dual heads. I left the stock video card in, (RageII 3d) with a whopping 8 mb/ram. It's this card that the Lenny installer picked up, not the dual head card. But that's OK. Is your card different from stock ? -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/7, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: OK kept the MacOS partition(s). There are 7 of em put there by the MacOS 9 disk utility (6 small ones). In Apple's partitioning, the 1st partition contains the partition map, then there are typically 5 driver partitions used by Mac OS, and then the actual Mac OS partition. You said in the beginning that you created the Linux partitions as well with Apple's Disk Utility? Did you change that part during Debian installation process? Or was it usable for Debian as such? I have one disk and it was labeled hdb when partioning. So that would be 'mount -t hfs (It's hfs)/dev/hdb7 (MacOS was installed on the 7th partition). I'm surprised that it is not hda. Perhaps it is jumpered as slave? It would more natural to jumper it as master. I remember that some older G3s had problems with slave drives, at least together with a master. There are a bunch of small Apple/MacOS partitions before this. But I assume since you mentioned system folder that it's has to go on the larger MacOS partition where the Mac system folder is; correct ? That's right. There didn't appear to be an 'initrd.gz' but there was an 'initrd'. Same thing right ? On /mnt I didn't have a directory 'System Folder', however mount didn't through any complaints when mounting hdb7, so I assume that was OK. Unfortunately it didn't boot. I'm getting close though. Any ideas ? There may be an empty directory called initrd on the root level of target. The initrd.gz (and vmlinux) should be in boot subdirectory. You did go through installing the kernel package? This may be a separate step in the installer. If you didn't see the 'System Folder' then the mounting was not OK. The explanation can be that Mac OS has put an HFS wrapper around the HFS+ file system. So try with 'mount -t hfsplus ...' instead. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
Hello Stephen / all, Here is a post I put on some time ago about this (Stephen, this is the post I mentioned). There is a preamble and then the step by step that worked for me. I have added a little bit about the space you will leave for Debian on your HD. This was not in the original post. You don't want to format that space using OS9, just leave it as free space and let the Debian installer do that for you. Good luck... Nick. Hello all, I have been working with Debian for quite a few years now and using powermac G3 machines with extra network cards in them as routers and firewalls, etc. These machines were set up back in the days of Woody and have been kept uptodate with security updates, but otherwise pretty much left untouched. Due to the issues around the firmware in these machines and because it was useful, I always set them up to boot initially into mac OS9 then use BootX to hand over the Debian. This worked a treat. However, I thought it would be good come up to date by installing Etch instead. I used a free machine that was not actually in use and ran the install using the current network install ISO. Things have changed since the days of woody and it now seems that floppy images (boot image and root image) are no longer used. Hence, I copied the initrd.gz file over to the mac HD and set that as the ram disk for the install. I also copied across the linux kernel and put that into the kernels folder in the system folder. Using that allows me to boot into the installer and using the installer I deleted the previous linux partition (hda7) and swap (hda8) and made new ones. Then installed the base system, etc,etc all the way through to where it runs tasksel. I just leave that at the basic system for now. Following on some more, finally we get to the point of trying to install Quik (which I don't need) and it gives an error anyway, since I have selected ext3 file system that is not supported in quik. I therefore say to carry on without a boot loader. Everything goes fine all the way to rebooting into the new system. However, when I do that, OS9 will not boot up. I just get the flashing disk symbol with a question mark on it. Popping the OS9 CD and booting off that and then running disk setup shows me that the HD has somehow been altered so it is not recognised properly as a mac HD. During the partitioning step, I did not alter anything other than hda7 and 8. I have found that I can reinstall the apple hard disk driver onto the disk and this then gets OS9 up and working. However, I cannot then boot into Debian, since the boot process gets a little way in and then I get a kernel panic at the point where it tries to mount the file system (error about no file system at /dev/hda7). I have done this several times now and the same thing happens every time. The install goes fine but then I end up with a completely unusable machine. I am wondering if I am going about the install process wrongly (ie using the initrd.gz file). I can't find anything really useful in the install manual or using Google. I will probably end up looking really stupid when someone points out an obvious mistake I have made, but I can live with that. If anyone has got etch installed on the beige g3 (its a 266 mhz machine, but I can't tell you the firmware version, etc. Would need to find out how to get at this) and can share their expertise, it would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance, Nick. So, here is the way I got it to work First off, I have to thank Rick for a very helpful discussion about this. Without his help, I would not have been able to get this baby working! I have OS9.2 on a circa 500 meg HFS+ partition, leaving the rest for debian (I will add here something I didn't mention in the original post - don't format this space using the OS9 CD, just leave it as free space). I use BootX as a boot loader. I used the netinstall CD for Etch. First boot into OS9 with the Etch CD in the CD drive. Copy the vmlinux kernel from the CD install directory and put it into the kernels folder in the system folder. Copy the initrd.gz image to the BootX folder. Select the BootX application and tell it to use the vmlinux kernel and set the RAM disk to initrd.gz image. In the additional kernel arguments box, type DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low (no quotes). Boot into linux. The installer will start. Go through this answering questions. When you get to the partitioning section, Partman will run. You should choose manual as your partitioning method. Select the free space and make a linux partition with Ext3 format and choose to mount / on it. On my machine this then becomes /dev/hda7/. Also make a swap partition (/dev/hda8). The sizes of these will depend on your HD size. You can also obviously choose to split up your file system so that not everything is under the root (/). I also named my /dev/hda7/ as debian. Probably makes no difference, but I did notice that the HFS+ partition
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 12:30:42AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Stephen, You are so close, I can almost taste it all the way up here in New Jersey! Yeah we're pretty close. LOL It's too late tonite, but Monday or Tuesday, unless you succeed before then, I'll put a spare disk in one of my Beige G3s and walk myself thru the steps, writing down each step as I do it. If that doesn't get you up and running, maybe we can do a phone-call step-by-step thing (I assume you are in Texas, USA?) Nope. But GoogleChat does client 2 client phonecalls. I believe you already know my Google e-mail. ;-D Are you using Sarge, Etch, or Lenny for this experiment? Just so I use the same thing myself. I'm attempting with Lenny. Rick I don't, can't, expect you to do that -- Very generous of you to offer though. If I get really stuck, then maybe I'll change my tune. But like you said -- Close very close. :-D -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 09:29:21AM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/7, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: OK kept the MacOS partition(s). There are 7 of em put there by the MacOS 9 disk utility (6 small ones). In Apple's partitioning, the 1st partition contains the partition map, then there are typically 5 driver partitions used by Mac OS, and then the actual Mac OS partition. You said in the beginning that you created the Linux partitions as well with Apple's Disk Utility? Did you change that part during Debian installation process? Or was it usable for Debian as such? The Debian Installer Partitioner complained that the appropriate flags weren't set (after using the MacOS disk utility to set the Linux partitions. I couldn't get any iteration of this to boot [using MacOS disk utility to format Linux partitions]) so I allowed the Debian Installer to remove the Linux partitions, (leaving everything but the MacOS partitions as free). I then let the installer use the remaining free space to create the necessary Linux partitions automatically. So no, it didn't appear to be usable for Debian as such. I have one disk and it was labeled hdb when partitioner. So that would be 'mount -t hfs (It's hfs)/dev/hdb7 (MacOS was installed on the 7th partition). I'm surprised that it is not hda. Perhaps it is jumpered as slave? It would more natural to jumper it as master. I remember that some older G3s had problems with slave drives, at least together with a master. It's been a long time since I ever used this in production. I recall that there had been a scsi hard drive in this box, and I had removed the stock IDE hard drive shortly after purchasing. When I pulled this out of storage in my basement several weeks ago, there wasn't any hard drive in it, so I put in a spare 13GB IDE drive I had. I guess I plugged it in the wrong socket on the motherboard; there are 2 IDE data sockets on the motherboard. Make sense ? The other probably is the hda data socket. I don't think the jumpers were changed. There didn't appear to be an 'initrd.gz' but there was an 'initrd'. Same thing right ? On /mnt I didn't have a directory 'System Folder', however mount didn't through any complaints when mounting hdb7, so I assume that was OK. Unfortunately it didn't boot. I'm getting close though. Any ideas ? There may be an empty directory called initrd on the root level of target. The initrd.gz (and vmlinux) should be in boot subdirectory. You did go through installing the kernel package? This may be a separate step in the installer. If you didn't see the 'System Folder' then the mounting was not OK. The explanation can be that Mac OS has put an HFS wrapper around the HFS+ file system. So try with 'mount -t hfsplus ...' instead. OK Risto, will try this. Thanks again for your time. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/8, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It's been a long time since I ever used this in production. I recall that there had been a scsi hard drive in this box, and I had removed the stock IDE hard drive shortly after purchasing. When I pulled this out of storage in my basement several weeks ago, there wasn't any hard drive in it, so I put in a spare 13GB IDE drive I had. I guess I plugged it in the wrong socket on the motherboard; there are 2 IDE data sockets on the motherboard. Make sense ? The other probably is the hda data socket. I don't think the jumpers were changed. The other IDE socket has probably the CD drive (hdc)? Maybe the spare drive has been as a slave in its earlier life? In Linux, hda/b are master/slave on primary ide bus, and hdc/d on secondary. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 10:41:09AM +0100, Nicholas Helps wrote: Hello Stephen / all, Hi Nicholas: So, here is the way I got it to work [ ...] Excellent instructions, thanks very much Nicholas ! I'm writing this from my G3 Beige booted into Lenny-Debian using mutt. :) I'm a happy camper. I think you have just written the best SxS I've ever seen. You should write technical manuals. The thing about updating the MacOS disk driver is all it took, and I was able to boot into the install I had done from yesterday. Yay !! Thanks to *Everyone* who helped here. Amazing that there are people around that remember the incantations one has to do to get these Old World boxen to work with a current Linux. Nicolas, do you mind if I add these instructions to the Debian Wiki ? I'll be sure to give full attribution. Cheers. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sep 8, 2008, at 6:38 PM, Stephen Allen wrote: Nicolas, do you mind if I add these instructions to the Debian Wiki ? I'll be sure to give full attribution. Congratulation on getting it working! That's great news. I have a couple of things to add to Nicholas' SxS that will help first-timers get it right the first time. If Nicholas is willing, I'd be more than happy to have his SxS and my additions merged into a wiki page. So that we don't have to go thru all this the next time! Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 07:45:21PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Congratulation on getting it working! That's great news. Thanks Rick for all your help ! I have a couple of things to add to Nicholas' SxS that will help first-timers get it right the first time. Good idea ! The only one there @ present is a little dated, as it used Sarge and wasn't complete. If Nicholas is willing, I'd be more than happy to have his SxS and my additions merged into a wiki page. So that we don't have to go thru all this the next time! Great ! P.S. I thought getting XOrg running would be tricky (don't have much experience with window managers as I usually run headless with a console) but it was pretty easy to get it configured. I just had to run 'dpkg-reconfigure Xorg' make some alterations and then 'startx' to get XFce4 up. Now I can use my legacy scsi scanner on a modern OS. :-D -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sep 8, 2008, at 9:32 PM, Stephen Allen wrote: I thought getting XOrg running would be tricky (don't have much experience with window managers as I usually run headless with a console) but it was pretty easy to get it configured. I just had to run 'dpkg-reconfigure Xorg' make some alterations and then 'startx' to get XFce4 up. Cool! I haven't tried that yet. I wasn't able to make it work properly under Sarge. The text consoles did everything I really needed, so I didn't try very hard. That'll be my next experiment with Lenny on a beige G3 Tower. Fun stuff! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/7, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The install is where I had the issue(s), of going through the steps and hanging when it came to installing the quik bootloader. I don't understand why it's install quick as I thought that BootX would be used. You should try to skip the quik installation. The advantage of using BootX is that if you use quik and it fails to boot you have no backup, with BootX you can always get into OS 9. You don't need - and cannot have - both: the OldWorld ROM always selects the first bootable partition. Or - in theory - you could have quik in first partition and OS 9 in second and use quik to boot OS 9, but I don't see any point in it. I went through several iterations of disk partioning schemes without any successful install. One message I got several times was that Quik has to be on the first partition. The MacOS has a small partition at the first that doesn't delete for me, so I'm kind of stuck there. You should keep the Mac OS partition. Get into another virtual terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F2), mount the Mac OS partition (the path is either /dev/hda... or /dev/bus/ide/disk.../part..., or similar): mount -t hfs /dev/... /mnt (or hfsplus), and copy the new initrd into it: cp -p /target/boot/initrd.gz '/mnt/System Folder' At this point you should have the kernel package installed on target partition. In terms of the disk partioning. Is the MacOS partition supposed to be overwritten and that's why the installer wants to install Quik ? I can't seem to find an option to toggle Quik off. Probably the installer wants to install quik because it is the only OldWorld capable boot loader it knows about. That's why you have to manually copy the initrd for BootX, as described above. And when booting the installed system with BootX, you have to select the new initrd and press 'Save prefs' to make it permanent. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 10:42:36AM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/7, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [ ...] In terms of the disk partioning. Is the MacOS partition supposed to be overwritten and that's why the installer wants to install Quik ? I can't seem to find an option to toggle Quik off. Probably the installer wants to install quik because it is the only OldWorld capable boot loader it knows about. That's why you have to manually copy the initrd for BootX, as described above. And when booting the installed system with BootX, you have to select the new initrd and press 'Save prefs' to make it permanent. Risto ---end quoted text--- Great. The added information helps muchly ! -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 10:42:36AM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/7, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The install is where I had the issue(s), of going through the steps and hanging when it came to installing the quik bootloader. I don't understand why it's install quick as I thought that BootX would be used. You should try to skip the quik installation. The advantage of using BootX is that if you use quik and it fails to boot you have no backup, with BootX you can always get into OS 9. You don't need - and cannot have - both: the OldWorld ROM always selects the first bootable partition. Or - in theory - you could have quik in first partition and OS 9 in second and use quik to boot OS 9, but I don't see any point in it. OK managed to skip the Quik installation. (I'll have to write up a SxS mentioning how to do this) I went through several iterations of disk partioning schemes without any successful install. One message I got several times was that Quik has to be on the first partition. The MacOS has a small partition at the first that doesn't delete for me, so I'm kind of stuck there. You should keep the Mac OS partition. Get into another virtual terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F2), mount the Mac OS partition (the path is either /dev/hda... or /dev/bus/ide/disk.../part..., or similar): OK kept the MacOS partition(s). There are 7 of em put there by the MacOS 9 disk utility (6 small ones). I have one disk and it was labeled hdb when partioning. So that would be 'mount -t hfs (It's hfs)/dev/hdb7 (MacOS was installed on the 7th partition). There are a bunch of small Apple/MacOS partitions before this. But I assume since you mentioned system folder that it's has to go on the larger MacOS partition where the Mac system folder is; correct ? mount -t hfs /dev/... /mnt (or hfsplus), and copy the new initrd into it: cp -p /target/boot/initrd.gz '/mnt/System Folder' There didn't appear to be an 'initrd.gz' but there was an 'initrd'. Same thing right ? On /mnt I didn't have a directory 'System Folder', however mount didn't through any complaints when mounting hdb7, so I assume that was OK. At this point you should have the kernel package installed on target partition. Unfortunately it didn't boot. I'm getting close though. Any ideas ? Thanks. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
Stephen, You are so close, I can almost taste it all the way up here in New Jersey! It's too late tonite, but Monday or Tuesday, unless you succeed before then, I'll put a spare disk in one of my Beige G3s and walk myself thru the steps, writing down each step as I do it. If that doesn't get you up and running, maybe we can do a phone-call step-by- step thing (I assume you are in Texas, USA?) Are you using Sarge, Etch, or Lenny for this experiment? Just so I use the same thing myself. Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/4, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: (4) Run BootX application (alternatively install BootX extension, and reboot). OK I did this, got a shell and then a kernel panic, and a reboot message for 3 minutes. Probably because of the kernel being in the wrong place eh ? I don't think so. BootX found the kernel, but maybe not the initrd. Did it complain about not finding the root partition? (5) When Bootx asks you to choose your OS, before doing so, press on Options, and select the initrd (Use specified RAM disk) (with BootX extension variant, you have to be careful to stop the clock from counting down, this can be done by writing a space into More kernel arguments field). You mean the ram disk is automatically set as default ? By space in the kernel arguments field, you mean to hit the space bar ? Excuse me if I'm being a little thick, it's the end of a long day. It is not used by BootX as default. When you have selected a RAM disk, the root partition field changes to adjust the maximum size of the RAM disk. Yes, I meant the space bar. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
hi reading this email again makes me wonder if this step has been omitted: Insert the PPC install disk and navigate to the /install/powerpc folder. Copy vmlinux (the linux kernel) to System Folder/Linux Kernels. Copy initrd.gz (the init ramdisk image) to System Folder and rename it to ramdisk.image.gz ? James
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
2008/9/6, James Kozak [EMAIL PROTECTED]: hi reading this email again makes me wonder if this step has been omitted: Insert the PPC install disk and navigate to the /install/powerpc folder. Copy vmlinux (the linux kernel) to System Folder/Linux Kernels. Copy initrd.gz (the init ramdisk image) to System Folder and rename it to ramdisk.image.gz ? James I don't think that the name, or even the location, of the initrd would matter, as long as BootX is told where it is. As a general rule: the shorter the name, the better. I have always been using initrd.gz as it is. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 12:04:09AM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/9/6, James Kozak [EMAIL PROTECTED]: hi reading this email again makes me wonder if this step has been omitted: Insert the PPC install disk and navigate to the /install/powerpc folder. Copy vmlinux (the linux kernel) to System Folder/Linux Kernels. Copy initrd.gz (the init ramdisk image) to System Folder and rename it to ramdisk.image.gz ? James I don't think that the name, or even the location, of the initrd would matter, as long as BootX is told where it is. As a general rule: the shorter the name, the better. I have always been using initrd.gz as it is. ---end quoted text--- Risto; I used your posted SxS, placed vmlinux initrd in the top level of the MacOS system folder, and it booted. The install is where I had the issue(s), of going through the steps and hanging when it came to installing the quik bootloader. I don't understand why it's install quick as I thought that BootX would be used. I went through several iterations of disk partioning schemes without any successful install. One message I got several times was that Quik has to be on the first partition. The MacOS has a small partition at the first that doesn't delete for me, so I'm kind of stuck there. In terms of the disk partioning. Is the MacOS partition supposed to be overwritten and that's why the installer wants to install Quik ? I can't seem to find an option to toggle Quik off. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
--- On Sat, 9/6/08, Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In terms of the disk partioning. Is the MacOS partition supposed to be overwritten and that's why the installer wants to install Quik ? I can't seem to find an option to toggle Quik off. -- I believe it is possible to terminate the install. IIRC, you press go back which takes you to the list of installation steps, then scroll down past quik. Never mind it complains, you are ok. You may need or which to go into a shell before you quit and copy the real initrd (not for installer) so that you get your modules (extensions) when you next boot ?? The hd is mounted in a strange place like /target/[a bunch of strange but obvious stuff] ?? Anyway the real initrd needs to be on the mac side for bootx to use... I don't recall real well its been pretty long time. Hope Ricks instructions go over this. Too bad, all this stuff used to be in the installagion guide and disappeared some time back. Ughh. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
A Wednesday 3 September 2008 14:22:01, Stephen Allen escreveu: I've searched for an install 'how-to' and settled on the G3-Beige how to on the Debian Wiki. There is a lot of conflicting advice on installing on these old world machines in the wild, and it's quite confusing. Some say not to use Boot-X and to use quik instead for example. Which way is the debian way ? As far as I know, G3 is not oldworld. Using the Debian-Etch-PPC net install CD, I booted up with my MacOS 9 CD. However when booted with system CD, it can't see the Debian Net install cd if I put it in the scsi CD drive. If I reverse this, and put the MacOS 9 in the scsi CD player, it boots fine, but sill doesn't see the Debian net install cd, in the onboard ata CD Drive. So, I can't start the install. You should boot from the Debian Install CD to install it! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 08:28:38PM +0200, José JORGE wrote: A Wednesday 3 September 2008 14:22:01, Stephen Allen escreveu: I've searched for an install 'how-to' and settled on the G3-Beige how to on the Debian Wiki. There is a lot of conflicting advice on installing on these old world machines in the wild, and it's quite confusing. Some say not to use Boot-X and to use quik instead for example. Which way is the debian way ? As far as I know, G3 is not oldworld. The earliest G3 systems were oldworld. In particular, the beige PowerMac G3 desktop systems and the first few models of PowerBook G3 are oldworld. Any system made after the introduction of the iMac (the first newworld system) would generally be newworld, such as the Blue White PowerMac G3. As far as I know, the basic key is that built-in USB ports equals newworld. Brad Boyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 11:54:47AM -0700, Brad Boyer wrote: On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 08:28:38PM +0200, Jos? JORGE wrote: As far as I know, G3 is not oldworld. The earliest G3 systems were oldworld. In particular, the beige PowerMac G3 desktop systems and the first few models of PowerBook G3 are oldworld. Any system made after the introduction of the iMac (the first newworld system) would generally be newworld, such as the Blue White PowerMac G3. As far as I know, the basic key is that built-in USB ports equals newworld. That's my understanding as well. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto http://sda2.freeshell.org GPG Key fingerprint: 7E6D 855D 8C03 15E4 1B12 2418 A71C 96CD 6843 1C91 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 08:28:38PM +0200, Jos? JORGE wrote: A Wednesday 3 September 2008 14:22:01, Stephen Allen escreveu: I've searched for an install 'how-to' and settled on the G3-Beige how to on the Debian Wiki. There is a lot of conflicting advice on installing on these old world machines in the wild, and it's quite confusing. Some say not to use Boot-X and to use quik instead for example. Which way is the debian way ? As far as I know, G3 is not oldworld. My understanding is that all the beige G3's are old world, as well as the 1st generation PowerBook G3's. Using the Debian-Etch-PPC net install CD, I booted up with my MacOS 9 CD. However when booted with system CD, it can't see the Debian Net install cd if I put it in the scsi CD drive. If I reverse this, and put the MacOS 9 in the scsi CD player, it boots fine, but sill doesn't see the Debian net install cd, in the onboard ata CD Drive. So, I can't start the install. You should boot from the Debian Install CD to install it! It won't boot from the Install CD -- AFAIK a known issue with the old world boxen. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto GPG Key fingerprint: 7E6D 855D 8C03 15E4 1B12 2418 A71C 96CD 6843 1C91 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
Hi Stephen, On Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:22:01 + Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would appreciate if the experts here could help me out -- Here's what I've tried so far; Using the Debian-Etch-PPC net install CD, I booted up with my MacOS 9 CD. However when booted with system CD, it can't see the Debian Net install cd if I put it in the scsi CD drive. If I reverse this, and put the MacOS 9 in the scsi CD player, it boots fine, but sill doesn't see the Debian net install cd, in the onboard ata CD Drive. So, I can't start the install. I don't have a Linux workstation available to make boot floppies; Can these boot floppies be made in MacOS ? If so how ? All the instructions I've been able to grep assume that one has a Linux box handy to make boot floppies. Do I need to go the boot floppy route, or should I be able to boot with the MacOS system CD, and then mount the Debian net install on the other drive ? AFAICR you can't boot those systems using a standard install CD -- it might have something to do with some parts of the boot code being proprietary and as such not freely redistributable. There are at least three ways to boot an Oldworld : quik, some utility that piggy-backs on the MacOS bootloader (I can't recall the name), or directly booting a COFF kernel image (I'm not even sure that one works on the beige G3). I personally use quik, but this might not be your best option : if you want to go that route, search for posts similar to yours in the archives -- I posted quite a lot of messages to the list at that time (some years back, I fear). The MacOS utility is quite simpler to install, but it requires MacOS, and is a bit of a hassle when you want to update your kernel. As for starting the installer, I fear you will have to use floppies (yes, they still exist ;-)) -- look for something called miboot, I think that's what I used at that time. Good luck, Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
Stephen, I used to do quite a lot of this kind of stuff. Search the debian-powerpc and debian-boot archives for my name (rbthomas) and Boot-X. I posted (about Sarge timeframe) several how-to articles on using MacOS-9 and Boot-X to install Debian on a beige-G3-tower. It does not require boot floppies. If you can't find anything useful that way, send me some email off- list and I'll see if I can find something that will help you. Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
Hi Stephen, In your place, I would take the following route: In OS 9: (1) download BootX from http://penguinppc.org/historical/benh/BootX_1.2.2.sit, and install it, (2) download Debian kernel and initrd from http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-powerpc/current/images/powerpc/netboot/vmlinux and http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-powerpc/current/images/powerpc/netboot/initrd.gz, and place them into :System Folder:Linux Kernels, (3) place the Debian netinst CD into a CD drive, (4) Run BootX application (alternatively install BootX extension, and reboot). (5) When Bootx asks you to choose your OS, before doing so, press on Options, and select the initrd (Use specified RAM disk) (with BootX extension variant, you have to be careful to stop the clock from counting down, this can be done by writing a space into More kernel arguments field). (6) Press on Save to prefs, in case you don't succeed on first try, and need to try again with a different command line, or the CD in another drive. (7) Press on Linux, and hope the best. Good luck, Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 09:54:21PM +0200, Simon Vallet wrote: Hi Stephen, Hey Simon, thanks for the help. On Wed, 3 Sep 2008 12:22:01 + Stephen Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ ...] I don't have a Linux workstation available to make boot floppies; Can these boot floppies be made in MacOS ? If so how ? All the instructions I've been able to grep assume that one has a Linux box handy to make boot floppies. Do I need to go the boot floppy route, or should I be able to boot with the MacOS system CD, and then mount the Debian net install on the other drive ? AFAICR you can't boot those systems using a standard install CD -- it might have something to do with some parts of the boot code being proprietary and as such not freely redistributable. Right There are at least three ways to boot an Oldworld : quik, some utility that piggy-backs on the MacOS bootloader (I can't recall the name), or directly booting a COFF kernel image (I'm not even sure that one works on the beige G3). BootX probably is the one that piggy-backs. I personally use quik, but this might not be your best option : if you want to go that route, search for posts similar to yours in the archives -- I posted quite a lot of messages to the list at that time (some years back, I fear). The MacOS utility is quite simpler to install, but it requires MacOS, and is a bit of a hassle when you want to update your kernel. OK I'll search the archives. My rather extensive Google searches didn't turn up anyting prior though from this list. Is it indexed by the Google machine ? You're using quik on a G3 ? If so could I trouble you to post a StepxStep ? As for starting the installer, I fear you will have to use floppies (yes, they still exist ;-)) -- look for something called miboot, I think that's what I used at that time. So miboot makes the floppies from MacOS ? I think that came with the copy of BootX I have here. What I don't understand, is that on booting from the MacOS install CD, the Debian Installer CD doesn't show as mounted in either of my other CD drives. At least one install article I read, indicated that installing from the Debian CD is possible that way. Good luck, Thanks. :D -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto http://sda2.freeshell.org GPG Key fingerprint: 7E6D 855D 8C03 15E4 1B12 2418 A71C 96CD 6843 1C91 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 05:12:27PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Stephen, I used to do quite a lot of this kind of stuff. Search the debian-powerpc and debian-boot archives for my name (rbthomas) and Boot-X. I posted (about Sarge timeframe) several how-to articles on using MacOS-9 and Boot-X to install Debian on a beige-G3-tower. It does not require boot floppies. That's the machine I'm using the Rev. B tower 300 Mhz. If you can't find anything useful that way, send me some email off-list and I'll see if I can find something that will help you. Thanks Rick, I'll take a look. It is indeed somewhat fun. -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto http://sda2.freeshell.org GPG Key fingerprint: 7E6D 855D 8C03 15E4 1B12 2418 A71C 96CD 6843 1C91 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 12:32:43AM +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Stephen, Hi Risto: In your place, I would take the following route: In OS 9: (1) download BootX from http://penguinppc.org/historical/benh/BootX_1.2.2.sit, and install it, (2) download Debian kernel and initrd from http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-powerpc/current/images/powerpc/netboot/vmlinux and http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-powerpc/current/images/powerpc/netboot/initrd.gz, and place them into :System Folder:Linux Kernels, OK I did this before, my error was that I didn't put the kernel and initrd in a directory called Linux Kernels in the top level of the system folder. So thanks for the clarification. (3) place the Debian netinst CD into a CD drive, (4) Run BootX application (alternatively install BootX extension, and reboot). OK I did this, got a shell and then a kernel panic, and a reboot message for 3 minutes. Probably because of the kernel being in the wrong place eh ? (5) When Bootx asks you to choose your OS, before doing so, press on Options, and select the initrd (Use specified RAM disk) (with BootX extension variant, you have to be careful to stop the clock from counting down, this can be done by writing a space into More kernel arguments field). You mean the ram disk is automatically set as default ? By space in the kernel arguments field, you mean to hit the space bar ? Excuse me if I'm being a little thick, it's the end of a long day. (6) Press on Save to prefs, in case you don't succeed on first try, and need to try again with a different command line, or the CD in another drive. (7) Press on Linux, and hope the best. Thanks for the excellent instructions Risto. Great list ! -- Regards, S.D.Allen - Toronto http://sda2.freeshell.org GPG Key fingerprint: 7E6D 855D 8C03 15E4 1B12 2418 A71C 96CD 6843 1C91 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: G3 Beige Tower install help
On Sep 3, 2008, at 10:32 PM, Stephen Allen wrote: Thanks Rick, I'll take a look. It is indeed somewhat fun. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but I agree -- it's fun getting old obscure hardware to do new tricks! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
