People who spend too much time here know that I can't boot my Pismo off of either the YDL or Ubuntu discs.

Here's the question:

Googling this problem results in stories of people mucking around with disc partitions, installing stripped-down versions of the Mac OS in order to boot, editing the yaboot.config.ini.whatever file, etc.

Should all that be necessary? Have I just been trying to take the easy way out by popping in the installer disc and expecting it to work?

GtDS

---

---
Use Excel? Can I interest you in saving some time with Excel? Listifier.com!

Greg, did you run across this old post @ MacOSXHints [forums.macosxhints.com] ?

I'm running YDL3.0 on a Pismo Powerbook, and it works great.

Download the YDL2.3 (most recent, only boot partition has changed from 10MB to 1 MB in YDL3) drive formatting guide, the YDL3.0 additional install guide and check the mailing list forums archive for discussion on 12" Powerbook installations. You will find out about extreme there. Print out the info and study the details... several times.

Installing Linux on my Pismo was especially easy with the ability to boot OS9 for partitioning setup and the ability to quickly swap out installed system hard drives.

Powerbooks have to have Linux first on internal drive because firewire isn't YDL bootable and a second drive setup for OSX has to be assigned as slave. Additionally, you have to boot the install from CD to have YDL recognize the hardware. Then OSX and OS9 can be on the internal drive, after Linux, and booted at startup via yaboot.

One issue you may encounter is that the internal hard drive is most easily formatted with the OS9 Disk Utility to create the unallocated drive space for YDL to then format as ext3 for PPCLinux. I don't know if OSX Disk Utility can partition drive space as "unallocated" along with your partitions for OSX, etc. If not (and OS9 isn't possible) you can use pdisk utility.

Also be sure to create at least a small partition in hfs (not hfs+) for accessing files back and forth between Linux and OSX. Linux hfs+ support is not yet well developed, although MOL (MAc on Linux) runs OSX in a window nicely. Check out maconlinux.org for info. MOL is included in YDL3 install.

It's certainly an adventure getting everything setup and working but it is definitely worth the effort. Linux PPC works really well for me. Its exceptionally fast, stable and feature rich.

Hopefully, that's a little help.

I have a Lombard and it boots from the Ubuntu install CD while holding the C key automagically. Wallstreets are old world and my Lombard and your Pismo are new world so that shouldn't be a problem there.

Here is a forum for you to check for PPC and Ubuntu:

[www.ubuntuforums.org]

And here's a discussion that might be of interest to you.

[www.ubuntuforums.org]

I have heard about some problems with the Pismo but you should be able to overcome them.

BTW is the CD or DVD drive the original? Or is it a replacement drive? Just curious.

---

---------
3GHz - The clock is STILL ticking Steve.

Panopticon: Thank you, but that post seems to be all about partitioning; I wish I could get that far! I intend to wipe/repartition the drive entirely for Linux, but I can't even boot off the installer disc.

Bangman: Replacement drive; Samsung SN-324b. But that drive boots both OS 9 and X, so I don't see how it could be so darned obscure.

GtDS