How to boot directly into linux on an OldWorld Mac

[Alexander Holst]

Am Montag, 02.06.03, um 06:08 Uhr (Europe/Berlin) schrieb 
yellowdog-general-request@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com:

> Message: 13
> From: "Mike Kimmick" <mkimmick@district70.org>
> To: "YDL General List" <yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com>
> Subject: How to boot directly into linux on an OldWorld Mac
> Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 21:06:55 -0700
> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>
> I am an owner of an OldWorld mac (7600), and I thought I'd share some 
> info
> with the PPC linux community starting with YDL users.  Since my mac is 
> an
> oldworld mac, I have read nothing but the fact that I have to use 
> BootX to
> boot into linux.  However, a couple of years ago when LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 
> was
> out, this CD was bootable in my machine, and it booted directly into 
> the
> linux installer.  So after digging through the newsgroups and not 
> finding
> any specific info regarding the boot method/software on the LinuxPPC 
> 2000 Q4
> CD, I remembered I had burned my own copy of this CD.  The answer to 
> the
> boot method was right there in the README in the System Folder on the
> CD...and this method still applies today.  Here's the README:

[snip ...]

> With this configuration in place, I selected "YDL Boot" as the startup 
> drive
> from MacOS's Startup Disk control panel.  After rebooting, I found 
> that the
> machine was booting directly into linux.
>
> Now, I can't say this works on all OldWorld macs, since I only have 
> one of
> many flavors. And, I've noticed that occasionally, from MacOS 9, the 
> "YDL
> Boot" drive is mysteriously not recognized as having a valid system 
> folder.
> I just move both the Finder and System files out of the System Folder 
> and
> put them back in to fix this problem.  Of course, when I have the "YDL 
> Boot"
> drive selected as the startup drive and I want to boot directly into 
> MacOS,
> I have to hold down Apple-Option-Shift-Delete to boot from my MacOS 
> drive.

I posted pretty much the same setup on May, 16th to this list. The 
subject was:
"Booting YDL form CD on Old- & NewWorld Macs [was Re: Question: Booting 
YDL 3.0 - miBoot - ext3]"
;)

> One last note.  I have a G3 Upgrade card and as of yet, I don't know 
> how to
> set the G3 Cache settings in linux.  Using BootX this can be done 
> easily,
> but I need a way to either pass kernel arguments (and I don't know what
> those arguments might be) via yaboot, or figure out how to set cache
> settings in linux.

You probably won't be able to use the G3 upgrade card at all, booting 
this way. Most G3 upgrade cards need a System Extension in Mac OS that 
switches the CPUs while booting :( What does your /proc/cpuinfo read? 
Does it report a G3 aka 750 or does it still report the 60x that is 
installed in the machine?

Does the G3 Upgrade card rplace the original CPU card that was in the 
machine? If so, you might be able to specify some kernel arguments 
(which I wouldn't know, but could probably be found out by booting via 
BootX with G3 Cache settings enabled and checking dmesg for the initial 
kernel commandline, quite at the beginning of that output) through an 
append="kernel arguments for cache settings" in your yaboot.conf file.

Hope that helps.

Greetings,
Alex

Alexander Holst
Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
<holst@fh-pforzheim.de>
ph: +49 [0]7231 28-6837
fx: +49 [0]7231 28-6040