Ubuntu/Kubuntu on Mac G5.

[Brian Durant]

On 22. jan 2006, at 19.10, Larry Grover wrote:

> Brian Durant wrote:
>> BTW, I tried installing Ubuntu Dapper PPC Flight 3 on my G5. I  
>> have  switched the SATA drives so that OS X is now located in the  
>> lower  drive bay. As I also had my Firewire external drive turned  
>> on and  attached so that Ubuntu would register it as well.  
>> Therefore, the  drive I installed Ubuntu on was registered as / 
>> sdb. Everything went  find until Ubuntu tried to install yaboot.  
>> Here are the messages, in  the correct order, but maybe not total  
>> content as I had to write it  on a piece of paper from tty3:
>
> Unless you were planning to install onto the firewire drive, there  
> was no reason to have it connected during the Dapper install.  You  
> don't need to "register" the firewire drive during the install in  
> order to use it later -- firewire drives work fine as hotpluggable  
> devices under linux.
>
> I'm confused about which drive is what:  was the firewire drive  
> assigned to sda? is sdc the original OSX system drive? is sdb the  
> drive you are trying to install Ubuntu onto (along with the FAT32  
> and HFS+ partitions you mentioned in previous messages)?
>
>> "Failed to install boot loader."
>> "Please check system log or the output of the third console (tty3)"
>> [2075.240927] ioct132(nvsetenv:4417): Unknown cmd fd(7) cmd(20007043)
>> {` ´} arg(00000000) on /dev/nvran
>> mkofboot: Finding OpenFirmware device path to `/dev/sdb2´...
>> mkofboot: Finding OpenFirmware device path to `/dev/sdc3´
>> ofpath: Driver: sg is not supported
>> mkofboot:  Unable to determine OpenFirmware path for macosx=/dev/sdc3
>> mkofboot:  Try specifying the real OpenFirmware path for macosx=/ 
>> dev/ sdc3 in /etc/yaboot.conf
>> mkofboot:  Failed with exit status 1
>
> I'm afraid I don't understand yaboot well enough to explain the  
> error you got.  Perhaps having the firewire drive attached caused a  
> problem?
>
> Was sdc3 the partition housing your OSX system?  What is supposed  
> to be in sdb2, the / directory of your linux system?
>
>> I tried to reinstall the installer 2 more times with the same  
>> result,  while inside the install procedure, with the same result.  
>> Then I  continued with the install procedure and received the  
>> following message:
>> "boot manuallty with the /boot/vmlinux kernel on partition /dev/ 
>> sdb3  and root=/dev/sdb3 passed as a kernel argument."
>
> If yaboot is correctly installed, when you boot the system you will  
> get a plain text prompt asking whether you want to boot OSX, linux  
> or from CDROM.  If you select linux, then you get a second plain  
> text prompt. At the second plain text prompt, hit the "tab" key  
> once, and you will get a listing of the kernels which are installed  
> and available to boot from.  I think the default kernel is labelled  
> "Linux".  You can pass arguments to the kernel from this second  
> text prompt.  For example, by typing:
>
> Linux root=/dev/sdb3
>
> and then hitting the enter key.
>
> If yaboot did not get installed properly, then you won't be able to  
> do this.  I believe you can still get into your linux partition and  
> boot the system by booting into open firmware (a shell-like  
> interface that accepts a variety of rather cryptic commands).  You  
> can boot into open firmware by holding down the command-option-O-F  
> keys when you boot.  I don't know open firmware well enough to tell  
> you how to boot your linux partition, however.  :(
>
> You may also be able to boot from your linux partition if you boot  
> while holding down the option key.  After a few minutes you should  
> get a graphical window which lets you select the boot device.
>
>> So, the question is where do I go from here? I imagine I could  
>> boot  from the Ubuntu Dapper PPC Flight 3 live-CD and go into etc/  
>> yaboot.conf which should reside on /dev/sdb2, correct? But what  
>> else  do I need to do? Remember, I am a newbie. I would want  
>> yaboot to  default to OS X, but to be able to boot into Ubuntu.
>
> I'm not sure if Ubuntu sets OSX up as default or not (I think not),  
> but it's easy enough to set it up yourself (basically, you edit the  
> yaboot.conf file, in /etc, and then run the ybin program).  But I  
> suggest getting you dual booting systems both installed correctly  
> first, and then worry about this issue later.
>
>> Lastly, I now get prompted when OS X has started up about my  
>> Ubuntu  install HD not being able to be read by OS X.
>
> OSX can't read ext2/3 filesystems (nor as far as I know, reiserfs,  
> xfs, etc).  There is third party support for ext2/3:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx
> but as far as I know, it doesn't work under OSX 10.4 yet (just 10.3  
> and earlier).
>
>> I hope you have some ideas :-)
>
> I'm sure you could fix things by a less drastic method, but unless  
> you get better ideas from someone else, I would suggest you try  
> reinstalling Dapper, but this time *don't attach the firewire  
> drive*.  Also, be sure you have your internal hard drives in the  
> order you want them (sda, sdb), and be sure you know the drive/ 
> partition where your OSX system is and where the /  directory of  
> your linux system will be.  I haven't installed yaboot on dual  
> drive system, so I'm not sure if it needs to be on the first drive  
> (sda) or not.
>
> HTH,
> Larry

I am also not sure if yaboot was installed properly. I don't get a  
prompt at startup. I was hoping that the Firewire drive would be  
configured to mount properly by including it at install time so it  
would just pop up on the desktop without having to set mount points.  
I did boot with the Ubuntu Dapper PPC Flight 3 live-CD and was able  
to find the yaboot.conf file. on my Ubuntu HD. As far as I can see,  
everything looks OK, but maybe I just don't know enough about yaboot,  
as I don't know where it is supposed to reside. Here is a copy of the  
yaboot.conf file. I can also try to take some snapshots of how the  
drives are listed in GParted a little bit later. As far as I can see  
the list accepts attached files.

Cheers,

Brian

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