Installing YDL 3.0 on a Mac G3

[Alexander Holst]

Hi Jeff,

Am 15.06.2004 um 04:31 schrieb 
yellowdog-general-request@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com:

> From: "Jeffrey Mannion" <jmannion23@cox.net>
> To: <yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com>
> Subject: Installing YDL 3.0 on a Mac G3
> Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 18:07:47 -0700
> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>
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> I got an old Mac G3 (350 mhz 256mb RAM)  that was running OS 10.2.8 ,
> but I formatted it, trying to install Yellow Dog.

How did you format it if you have no operating system for it? Do you 
have at least a bootable CD with any sort of Mac OS?
"old Mac G3 (350 mhz 256mb RAM)" sounds like a Blue&White G3? If so, 
you should be able to boot from the YDL CDs, which is what I assume you 
did, otherwise you couldn't get into the installer right?

> I currently have NO
> operating system on my machine. While attempting to install YDL, during
> the partitioning stage, I select auto partition, and it locks and
> restarts saying I do not have a Mac bootstrap partition. I am unsure 
> how
> to fix this problem, and if there even is a way to fix it.

I am not quite sure, why autopartition will not install the mac boot 
partition, as it should on a NewWorld Mac. You could solve this by 
manually partition the drive - the Guide to install should help you in 
choosing the partitons.

When formatting the drive, how did you do that? Did you erease the Mac 
partition table? If so, the installer complains about the missing mac 
partition table and you have to create one manually, by using pdisk or 
parted. When you choose manual partitioning, you will be presented with 
an option to do this with pdisk or parted. From within these tools, you 
can initialize a disk with a Macintosh partition table. Maybe 
autopartitioning will work after that. If not, just create your 
partitions by hand.

> I bought the
> mac used and have no discs for OS X, and I heard that it was necessary
> to have a mac os on the machine to boot YDL??

Not neccessarily. It is possible to run OldWorld Macs completely MacOS 
free - thats how I boot all my YDL machines here at work, as well as at 
home. I have never encountered any problems so far (see more details 
here: http://apple.fh-pforzheim.de/Linux/index.html) follow the links 
at the bottom for Boot Volume setup. You only need Mac OS to get a 
partition up and running with miboot. On the above mentioned page, 
you'll find a link to a disk image of such a partition with miboot and 
the boot kernel for YDL 3.0 [I haven't had a chance to upgrade it to 
YDL 3.01 as of yet). To install YDL 3.0, you have to manually select 
the "install-YDL-3.0" target. To select the different targets, hit the 
space bare when you see the landscape with TUX. You will have to edit 
the yaboot.conf file, located in the "System Folder" manually to suit 
your needs after installation, to reflect the proper root partition.

In case you have a B&W G3, which I assume, otherwise the YDL CDs 
wouldn't boot, and you wouldn't be able to get into the installer 
without any sort of a helper, such as miboot, actually you do not need 
to install any sort of Mac OS on the machine, as YDL installes a 
bootloader, yaboot, that loads the kernel directly, without any help of 
Mac OS. This actually is the preferred method to boot on NewWorld 
machines, as you do not have to deal with any residues left from Mac OS 
(video, L2 cache ...)

> I do not want to run mac os, but if I have to install it into a small 
> partition and dual boot the
> two I would accept that. If that is the only possibility, is there a
> cheap way to get an older mac os that would allow me to boot a linux
> distro (preferably ydl)?? Thanks in advance if you have any
> suggestions!!

> You must install OS 9.x or below and use BootX (or quik, if you are=20
> daring). You cannot install it on an Old World Mac without a Mac OS=20
> installed first.
>
> Ben Ricker

Yes, you can - see above!

> I don't think so, if I remember right you can boot from CD on an old
> world.  Yeah you can, just tried booting from a 9 CD on my Performa
> 5215.
>
> Jason
>
> On Jun 14, 2004, at 8:40 PM, Andrew wrote:
>
>>
>> heh.. sorry to break your fun but I am wondering how he got to
>> partitioning stage, with NO operating system, if his Mac is a
>> old-world.
>> Im confused. He must use a new-world to boot from the CDs, right?

Any Mac, capable of running Mac OS (not Mac OS X) can boot from a CD 
containing a bootable Mac OS in general. I am not sure though, if your 
hardware is capable of booting Mac OS 7.5. With the YDL CDs, things are 
a bit different: they do not contain any sort of Mac OS or fake system 
such as miboot. They make use of the NewWorld boot mechanism. That is, 
it loads a bootloader directly into OpenFirmware which then loads the 
kernel into RAM, so no Mac OS is needed. This is only possible on 
NewWorld machines (B&W G3 and onwards). Since Mac OS 9, Apple used this 
mechanism on NewWorld machines to load the "Mac OS ROM" into OF and 
then boot. The Performa 5215 is definitely OldWorld, so it will boot 
Mac OS =< 9 from a CD but will not boot from any YDL 3 CDs.

Hope that clarifies a few things ;)

Good luck,
Alex


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