Mac Projects - LinuxPPC on PowerMac 8500

Submitted by tachyon on February 24, 2005 - 5:28am

The copy of LinuxPPC I was given for this experiment was from 2000. Therefore I presume some of the issues outlined below may be as a result of this.

Installed successfully, it wasn't the smoothest installation in the world, due to not knowing which partition Linux was on after partitioning the drive.

It only had Gnome installed, and I prefer KDE. So I figured I'd take the KDE 3.2 I have and install it. So it needed to be decompressed. Figured out how to use bunzip, and got the KDE files off the CD.

BUT LinuxPPC doesn't have a compiler- no gcc! OK, we could get that, we just need a library. Went to the link suggested by www.gcc.org. Now! get it on to the 8500. Tried networking- no go. Setup FTP on my G3 running OS X 10.3.6, but LinuxPPC can
't connect. I'll post the error message.

I have just checked YellowDog's website and it appears that v3, which I have, can install on the 8500. May have to switch projects!

Comments

Submitted by tachyon on October 1, 2006 - 7:47am.

Well I tried Ubuntu on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet with disasterous, or rather poor results. It wouldn't install, in spite of wiki and forum posts. Looks like no one else had the same trouble that I did.

In order to soothe my frustration, I installed LinuxPPC on it. Much much better than the Dapper Drake CD. I mean for one thing it boots into an X-Windows driven installer.

Then it all installs smoothly. But I still can't figure out how to get it to recognize my router is a gateway and therefore see the DNS.

I can get on my network but not on to the internet.

Jon's picture

Submitted by Jon on October 2, 2006 - 6:26pm.

I've since FreeCycle'd the machine, but I once put Ubuntu on an 8500. The main problem for me was RAM. Unless you have 128MB or more, a full regular Ubuntu install is a bit RAM hungry for an older machine. I used BootX on a small MacOS partition to get Ubuntu going, and it was just like any other OldWorld Mac install. Is there a particular reason you are trying to install 6 year old Linux distros? For a mimal install you might try a custm Debian install.

Submitted by tachyon on October 7, 2006 - 11:55pm.

Hey Jon, I just tried my old LinuxPPC disk out of frustration because the Ubuntu 6.06 disc just plain didn't work.

Yes I have BootX on there and it boots into the ramdisk image fine, it's only after the installation has begun that it hangs...

It kept stopping in the middle of one of the scripts because the ramdisk image that it booted from didn't understand the filesystem on the CD.

I don't have the knowledge to be able to modify the ramdisk image to work properly.

So if you have a ramdisk image that will actually be able to read the CD so I can complete the install, by all means let me know how to get it!

Jon's picture

Submitted by Jon on October 9, 2006 - 9:47am.

On the 8500 I was working on I used 5.10. There seem to be issues with 6.06 on OldWolrd machines. Be sure to copy the kernel and initrd over to the Mac OS side before rebooting the install.