Re: Newbie problems installing Debian on ibook G3

From: Errandir (errandir_news_at_mph.eclipse.co.uk)
Date: 11/11/03 

Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 01:24:07 +0000

Ennio,

Ennio-(Sr) wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I'm trying to install linux (Debian) on a Power PC G3 300 MHz (IBook) with 64
> MB RAM, which I saw for the first time in my life a couple of days ago! :-)
> Following information found on the web I repartitioned the HD (3 GB only)
> and created 2 HFS and 1 HFS+ partitions : on the latter I succeded in
> installing a minimum MAC OS X 10.3 (despite an initial warning about the
> un-installability of 'Essentials' for lack of RAM), reserving the former for
> Debian and an Exchange partition between the two OSs. From the many readings
> about the subject I got the idea that:
>
> 1. It was not necessary to have an ext2 fs on the HD, as this would be
> created at boot time. 2. The only files needed for the task were: linux.bin,
> root.bin, yaboot and yaboot.conf (all of them to be copied into the
> holding-place-HFS partition, in my case 'Debian' on partition 'hd:2' or
> 'rdisk0s2').
>
> OK! After some initial troubles with OF and the same yaboot (the one from the
> Debian site didn't work and I downloaded from penguinppc, untarring in a
> Mac-Os X unix-terminal and copied it from the untarred destination to the
> 'root' location, i.e. '/Volumes/Debian/' ) I finally got the yaboot 'boot'
> prompt. However, this starts with the warning: -------- [device
> description]:2,yaboot.conf: Unknown or corrupt filesystem Can't open config
> file Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.10 ..... WARNING: Bootstrap partition type
> is wrong: "Apple_HFS" type should be: "Apple_Bootstrap"
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ boot:

I'm amazed it got this far. I don't think you got beyond the boot prompt, did
you? Looks to me like you need a linux kernel as well. My mac-fdisk output has:

/dev/hda
         # type name length base ( size
) system
/dev/hda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 (
31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hda2 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 64 (
28.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/hda3 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 56 @ 120 (
28.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/hda4 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 176 (
28.0k) Unknown
/dev/hda5 Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh 56 @ 232 (
28.0k) Unknown
/dev/hda6 Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
(256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hda7 Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
(256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hda8 Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
(256.0k) Unknown
/dev/hda9 Apple_HFS Untitled 18874368 @ 1824 (
9.0G) HFS
/dev/hda10 Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap 1600 @ 18876192
(800.0k) NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hda11 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 / 10485760 @ 18877792 (
5.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda12 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /usr 16777216 @ 29363552 (
8.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda13 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /home 16777216 @ 46140768 (
8.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda14 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Share 12902400 @ 62917984 (
6.2G) Linux native
/dev/hda15 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 2097152 @ 75820384 (
1.0G) Linux swap
/dev/hda16 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 free 222624 @ 77917536
(108.7M) Linux native

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=78140160
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 23, type=0x1
2: @ 120 for 36, type=0xffff
3: @ 176 for 21, type=0x701
4: @ 232 for 34, type=0xf8ff

Partition 1 through 10 are for MAC, 11 through 16 are Linux. Partition 10 holds
the yaboot boot loader, but I don't know how to mount that (mount gives errors
when I try).

> --------
>
> Now, my basic question is: - Did I misunderstand all the documents claiming
> you do not need to have a linux partition beforehand (# 1)?

These documents asume you install from CD, floppy or over the network. I've
never seen anybody try it like you are trying (but I can be out of date).

> Another, of course, follows: - How can I make a linux partition using Mac Os
> X? (I've read about mac-fdisk but not found a .tar.gz for it!).

mac-fdisk is run from inside the Debian installer. You don't have an
installation program yet, only the boot loader...

>
> Any suggestion will be highly appreciated :-)

I would recommend downloading a mini-ISO, burn that to CD and boot from it.

Martin

> Regards, Ennio-Sr
>

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