Subject: Re: having a VERY hard time booting-help!
From: Peter Andersen (peterandersen@mac.com)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2001 - 05:02:02 MDT
I have had some of the same problems.
First of all, you can boot into linux via the CD. At yaboot you should press
the TAB key and an option will let you boot linux with the kernel from the
CD and the rest using your hard-drive.
Presumably your machine is an "Open Firmware" model, meaning that you can
hold down command+alt+o+f keys on startup which drops you into Open
Firmware, a command line system, that allows you to set various preferences
that are saved in NVram as far as I know.
In Open Firmware, you can set and read environment variables using "setenv"
and "printenv" commands. The variable you need to set is the "boot-device"
variable.
On my iMac, the following does the trick:
To boot linux just once without changing startup disk:
boot hd:10,\\ofboot.b
OR
boot hd:10,\\yaboot
If you want the changes to be permanent:
setenv boot-device hd:10,\\ofboot.b
OR
setenv boot-device hd:10,\\yaboot
The first (ofboot.b) sends you into the Open Firmware menu described in the
ofboot.b file on partition 10 (your boot-partition) of the harddrive. The
second (yaboot) goes directly to the second stage yaboot described in the
yaboot.conf file the same place. These files need to be configured correctly
which can be done from the Mac OS (if it shows the boot-partition) or from
the Linux terminal, booting from the CD. In Linux terminal you should "su
root" and then use hmount, hcopy etc. to access the hfs-partition you need
to work with.
-Peter
> From: Christopher Stockwell <drstockwell@home.com>
> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
> Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 16:38:54 -0600
> To: <yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com>
> Subject: having a VERY hard time booting-help!
>
> Hi,
> Well I can install YD 2.0, but CANNOT boot it. Or at least I haven't been
> able to. Can someone help me?
>
> G4 400mhz, 384 megs ram, 17GB, 10GB, 57GB.
>
> the first drive ATA2 17GB is partitioned as follows:
>
> 2GB HFS with Mac OS 9.1...
> hda10 is 10mb yellowdog boot (as per instructions)
> hda11 is 256mb swap
> hda12 is max(the rest of drive) linux
>
> YD 2.0 installs fine, and when I reboot...it goes straight into mac os...
> IF I hold down option key, I get a picture of a drive (one with mac os on
> it), nothing else, unless I leave the YD 2.0 cd in, whereas I also get a
> picture of the CD.
>
> Any specific ideas?
>
> Thank you so much,
> chris
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sat Aug 04 2001 - 04:09:45 MDT