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frombadtraverse
05-17-2003, 12:52 AM
So I have a Mac (PPC) at work, it was inherited, I didn’t choose it! It’s a G4 with a 450 Mhz PPC and an ATI 128 rage card. Much more modern than my old 100 Mhz Mac. :)

It’s running OSX on HD2, OS9.2 on HD1, and OS8.2 on Archive, I also had a 17 G empty HD on HD3. Of course those are just names. The real hard drives are 2 partitions on ATA1 (HD1 and HD2), SCSI 0:3 is Archive, and SCSI 0:4 is HD3. Hope you can keep up with that. SCSI 0:2 is a Yamaha CD burner.

So I downloaded the Mandrake 9.1 PPC CDs’ and proceeded to try to install.

First I got a GUI screen that was unreadable. (I wanted a GUI install as I am way lazy). I then did the command on the install prompt: install-gui gui-old video=atyfb128 : notice there are no extra spaces around the dashes or equals sign. It was hard to get my fingers to do this.

I then got to the GUI and the install was uneventful. I put it on HD3. But alas, I could never figure out how to configure yaboot to boot from this drive. Or, at least I gave up rather easily.

So I moved the operating system OS 9.2 from HD1 to HD3. It was a simple drag and drop. Simple operating systems are sometimes a boon. Just their frequent crashes drive me crazy.

I then proceeded to install on HD1. I deleted the partition under the Mandrake partitioning GUI. I then made a 1 MB Apple_Bootdev partition (it doesn’t do this automagically for you, and is a necessary step). Then I did an ‘Auto Allocate’ for the rest of the partition, about 17 G.

I did the rest of the install, which went smoothly, and got to the bootloader page and post bootloader it gives you instructions to write down how to change Open Firmware. Write this information down as it is very important. It is the partition location of yaboot. The start of this information is how to get into OF and consists of holding down the – apple-option-o-f – keys simultaneously at bootup. The rest is the information for accessing yaboot. This is necessary in case you change startup disks in OSX or OS9, as you will loose Linux otherwise. It’s there just unseen.

After the bootloader page you get the summary. At this point you need to configure your video as we went with a LoRes default earlier. It was rather easy I just chose Apple HiRes 1024X1280 monitor and the ATI Rage 128 video card. This works fine.

I was then able to boot into Linux by hitting the L key on yaboot. Came up with KDE, etc, etc.

I wasn’t able to boot into OSX any more however. I pressed the M key with no avail. I then went to the yaboot webpage:
http://penguinppc.org/projects/yaboot/doc/yaboot-howto.shtml/

I figured that yaboot was on HD9 per the instructions above for writing down important yaboot information. That made root (/) on HD10, swap on HD11, and home (/home) on HD12. I then went into yaboot.config (it’s in /etc) and saw that yaboot had configured MacOs to be HD12. This obviously wouldn’t work as /home is HD12. I then edited yaboot.config to make MacOs be HD13. Then you must run ybin to make the changes take effect. This was the ticket.

So now at the yaboot text boot screen I type L for Linux and M for OSX. I have a dual boot on a Macintosh. WooHoo.

Grogan
05-17-2003, 01:05 AM
Hi FBT, good to see you. Thanks for the account... it's interesting. (No experience with that platform here)

You sound like you're having fun :D

Cool Canuck
05-17-2003, 10:18 AM
WTG FBT :tup:

Now I gotta go look and see if you can run any Linux programs on a Linux Mac or are do they need to be Mac specific?? The older I get, the less I know.

Case
05-17-2003, 10:33 AM
Heheh - Good job FTB!

Sounds like Linux is truly a universal OS . . .

frombadtraverse
05-18-2003, 12:21 AM
CC, Linux on a Mac runs the normal Linux programs. It's as though you are on a normal Linux machine. I have so far run Konqueror and all the KDE programs, also Open Office, and Freecell, one of my favorites. I haven't been able to make Tuxracer work yet, I'll have to figure out how to enable OpenGL, if I can. The normal programs are there just haven't tried them all yet.

BitBender
05-18-2003, 12:29 AM
GTSYA, fbt.

Interesting, Linux on a mac... But then, We can run mainframe OS'es under linux, so why not!

Case
05-18-2003, 01:16 AM
"Good to see you around"

Yeah, I second that :)

Cool Canuck
05-18-2003, 06:16 AM
Originally posted by frombadtraverse
CC, Linux on a Mac runs the normal Linux programs. It's as though you are on a normal Linux machine.
Cool.... Thanks.

frombadtraverse
05-21-2003, 01:36 AM
Muhaha, or some other IA expletive.

I just ran MOL OSX, that translates into Mac on Linux OSX version, and I was able to run OSX in a window on my Linux desktop. I could see some lag, but it put OSX in a window and ran native OSX applications.

I even ran my old version of Excel in Classic mode inside of my OSX window. Let's see, running three operating systems, Linux on top, OSX next, and OS9 inside of it. A little sluggish, but I only have a 450Mhz G4.

Still just playing around, let's see how far I can push it before a crash. I am impressed with Mandrake PPC though.

[edit] PS. I haven't got my network printing running yet though. It's a learning experience.