Is Ubuntu giving up on the PPC platform?

Eric Dunbar eric.dunbar at gmail.com
Sun Feb 12 23:46:58 UTC 2006


> > "default=macosx" is not what you included. That is why I was asking,
> > as OF totally freaked, as per my last e-mail.

PS Just a few comments (from an amateur with but an amateur's
understanding of OF) about Open Firmware...

You can reset the PRAM on your computer by holding down
command-option-P-R while the computer goes "bong". Keep holding those
keys until it goes "bong" again.

This resets the default startup partition to the first partition. If
it doesn't find a bootable Mac OS (or yaboot bootloader) on the first
partition your Mac's default HD Open Firmware will keep trying each
higher partition, and then each bootable drive it can find until it
finds a bootable partition (and, if it doesn't it'll complain ;-).

This is why YellowDogLinux (and, maybe Ubuntu... don't know if they
do) recommends that you install Linux to the lowest partition
possible.

When you use the Startup Disk control panel/preferences pane in Mac OS
X or Mac OS 9 these two OSes will change the default startup partition
(in PRAM) to point to the partition that houses the particular Mac OS
that you want to boot (Macs have had the beautiful ability to house
multiple versions of Mac OS on one harddrive in separate partitions
for the better part of 20 years ;-). Since Linux doesn't show up in
the Startup Disk control panel or preferences pane you lose the
ability to (easily) boot into Linux since you can't select your Linux
flavour.

That's when keeping your Linux on the first partition comes in handy
-- all you have to do to regain yaboot is to reset the PRAM
(command-option-P-R) since it'll be the lowest bootable partition.
But, if you're handy with the Linux boot/installer CD it doesn't
matter since all you have to do is boot into Linux and run your yaboot
-v (is that what you do?... RTM).

Anyway, hope this quick ramble helps you (or someone else).

Eric.




More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list