Problems installing Yellow Dog Linux onto Old World Mac

[Eric Dunbar]

On 31/08/06, Paul Higgins <higg0008 at tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> Does yaboot even work on an Old World machine?  According to the Debian
> people, it doesn't.  They supply this link to several bootloaders:
>
> <http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/>

Only BootX and another which tries to be open source only (quik?)!

> It would be nice if someone could figure out how to make YDL 4.0.1 (or better
> yet, 4.1) install on Old World machines like the beige G3, but the reality is
> that those machines are getting pretty old at this point, and there probably
> aren't that many people masochistic enough to take on such a task.  I think
> at this point, the only distros that support Old World are Debian and
> Mandriva (and neither one is particularly easy to install on those machines).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record ;-)...

YDL 4.0 DEFINITELY installs on Old World machines (at least the Beige
G3) with very LITTLE effort. All it takes is for the individual
involved to read the instructions and then to download the appropriate
kernel. Updating YDL through yum will pull in a more recent 'official'
kernel that WILL work with Old World machines. Also, hangs are NORMAL
at the end of the install since the installer tries to do some magic
that isn't supported by Old World hardware!!!

People on this forum (myself included) have posted links on how to do
this in this message thread.

Upgrading to 4.0.1 is a trivial task, IIRC:
sudo yum update
(or was that sudo yum upgrade... it's been so long since I've had to
use yum for anything more than individual packages that my memory is
rusty)
(you might need to point to new repositories).

As for 4.1, it doesn't seem like people have had consistent success
with that version. It looks like 4.0.1 is the end of the road for YDL
for Old World machines.

PS I AM running 4.0.1 and have been doing so for the better part of a
year and a half!

Eric.