[SOLVED] Beige G3 Tower (oldworld) Massive Fail

[abtabt]

hi dont give up

i have a lot of experience of old world mac

.i always use the alternative cd
(i dont think the xfce cd will work on old world mac but i am not sure correct if i have wrong

(i have use it from start ubutu 5.04 - 9.04 the alternative cd)

and start to install only server dont select ubuntu-desktop yet

then when the server works

add the desktop you want (icewm , lxde or xfce )

witch version of ubuntu ?????

[eldon.t]

i have installed debian 5.03 netinst successfully

during install you have to be very careful about two things that were described here and there :
- you need to have a bootable mac os9 at all times !
That means either you have a bootable install CD and make sure it works, which i don't, or a working hd with mac os9, here it was my orginal scsi disk i didn't modify because i was replacing that hd with another one for bootx/linux.
That's because when you use the linux install to make your partitions it will corrupt the mac boot (mbr ?) and after linux installs, your disk won't boot anymore and you'll have to boot either from cd or from another disk and restore the disk driver on your "broken bootx mac os"..

-if you install debian make sure you use ext3 partitions and not ext2 because debian installer will try to install quik bootloader on your system and i have no idea what kind of problems it can introduce, but will fail to do so if you don't have an ext2 partition.

besides that you need to specify both vmlinuz and initrd.gz in bootx and set the bootloader option "root=/dev/xxx", with xxx being your linux root partition.

all of that was already described in other tutorials but that's really the only three obstacles i had to face.

then i wasn't able to mount the hfsplus mac os partition to copy the new vmlinuz and initrd from the fresh install and had to mount/use an usb key.
If you forget about that at the end the debian install, as i did, you can boot the debian install again from bootx as you did the first time and then do your mounts and copies using a shell from the install menu at the bottom.


debian comes with gnome, it's a bit slow on my ppc 333MHz with 384Mb of ram, i'll try to change the ati driver and check the xorg conf to see if it improves performances, and i'll also try to install xfce as a gnome replacement.

maybe i'll try some ubuntu/xubuntu alternate cd later to see if it works the same way debian does.

[eldon.t]

Hi

okay it seems the distros using the debian installer work fine but not the distros having a graphical interface.

so both ubuntu-ppc-alternate and xubuntu-ppc-alternate work fine.



Now for some post install configuration i was wondering if anyone managed to get xorg to set the monitor at 1024x768, here no matter what i do i can't make it use that resolution although 1024 works in mac os9. I use a vga dongle mac/pc.

my beige powermac g3 has an ati rage 3d and the driver used seems to be mach64, anyone with a working 1024x768 xorg.conf ? do you need to pass a "vga=" option on the boot command line ?

thx

[abtabt]

so both ubuntu-ppc-alternate and xubuntu-ppc-alternate work fine.


Thats my experince to , only alternative cd works for old world mac

Now for some post install configuration i was wondering if anyone managed to get xorg to set the monitor at 1024x768, here no matter what i do i can't make it use that resolution although 1024 works in mac os9. I use a vga dongle mac/pc.

yes it can be done but you need to edit xorg.conf

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and put in right hoz ,ver hz for the monitor

before you do that check

code

nano /var/log/Xorg.0.log

thats the log for the server and maybe you see there whats wrong


my beige powermac g3 has an ati rage 3d and the driver used seems to be mach64, anyone with a working 1024x768 xorg.conf ?

the driver is ati , check the /var/log/Xorg.0.log


do you need to pass a
"vga=" option on the boot command line ?

no you dont

A easy way too get 1024*768

is to change driver for the video card

only put in

Driver "fbdev" in xorg (framebuffer)


example

ection "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "fbdev"
# BusID "PCI:0:17:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

then the mac os9 resolution must be set to 1024*768

and version of UBUNTU ???

[eldon.t]

thx abtabt for your reply

i managed to set the resolution by adding sync lines to xorg otherwise upper resolutions would not be detected, i added those two lines to my monitor setup :

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
	Option		"DPMS"
	HorizSync 	30-96
   	VertRefresh 	50-160
EndSection

Unfortunately on my oldworld g3 333MHz/384MB, xubuntu with xfce4 is quite slow especially the 9.10 karmic.

Debian xfce install was faster but i've decided to move to an even lighter desktop manager and begin to appreciate the swiftness of lxde.

it's significantly faster than xfce here, and if you're on karmic you'll probably want to get rid of gdm (login manager) which is simply terribly slow !

Doing all that i must have damaged my distro a bit because bits and parts are missing here and there so i'll probably start again with a fresh ubuntu-alternate install without gnome desktop and then install lxde.

There's also no need to use xubuntu if you're going to use lxde, it will not do much harm if you use it but i guess it just installs some unnecessary apps and packages..

i'm getting close to a really nice linux ppc setup.

[abtabt]

some things i share


Unfortunately on my oldworld g3 333MHz/384MB, xubuntu with xfce4 is quite slow especially the 9.10 karmic.

have you enable the cache ?? and 16 bit colur in xorg

if you disable the desktop speed up tings (

i have not use 9.10 yet,i still use 9.04 but i use icewm and no login manager (if need a faster login manager use slim )

icewm need some conf but you can get like you want
and use part of xfce uilty like xfce panel etc etc even ubuntu parts can
be used
but the speed is better then gnome ,xfce.
lxde parts have i not tried yet on icewm

and for browser and e-mail
i use OPERA on a PPC 4400 with 108 MB memory

[Mocker]

Thanks to the posts here, I've been able to make some progress... I get to install Xubuntu using the alternate install ISO, and get all the way to the step of copying the boot directory to the Desktop Folder.

When I get to step 5 themacmeister's instructions, rebooting into OS 9.2 using the CD, I find the hard disk is marked as uninitialized. The Update Driver menu option in Drive Setup's Function menu is dimmed, even when I select the hard disk. The only thing I can do is initialize it.

I figured this might be caused by the way I partitioned the disk (I just created the partition for Mac OS using only part of the disk, and then used the Xubuntu installer to create the Linux partitions I needed). So, I tried again, using Mac OS's Drive Setup to create the partitions for Mac OS, Linux, and Linux swap. I set the partition types of the last two to Linux Home and Linux Opt, hoping the Mac would just ignore any changes to the partitions. However, I have the same problem... I can't go any further without initializing the hard disk which, of course, wipes out all of my work! Oddly, when I say to initialize the disk, the Drive Setup program *does* warn me that I'm about to nuke my Mac OS and Linux volumes... so it is somehow aware of them, it just refuses to do anything with them.

The one oddity in the setup I is the hard disk is a 250GB IDE drive (the old disk croaked and the only IDE I had lying about was the 250GB). Mac OS seems to only see half of it, or 125GB or so. I've been creating three partitions, one for Mac OS that's about 60GB, one of Linux, also about 60GB, and a 1-2GB swap partition. Could the size of my partitions be throwing something off?

How have other partitioned their disks?

[eldon.t]

i beleive your partitioning is wrong.

here when i installed my fresh mac os 9.2 on the new ide drive it created 5 or 6 (not sure from memory) partitions for the mac os only !
then after macos 9 is done installing and i can boot from the ide mac os, i can install bootx, copy the vmlinux/initrd and boot linux from bootx.
In the linux setup i add three linux partitions "/" "/home" "swap" which are indeed hda7 8 9, showing clearly that a bunch of partitions are already present from the fresh macos install..

The other thing important is not to install any boot sector for linux because it may cripple your macos install. Boot sector or not your linux hd won't boot mac anymore after additional partitioning has been performed that's why you need to boot a working mac (cd or hd, in my case) and perform a "driver update" on your "unmounted mac/linux hd". To do so i open the mac disk utility where you can use the "initialize" button, select the unmounted driver then use the top menu to "update driver" that disk. If your "update driver" was grayed out it may have to do with your "faulty" mac os partitioning, why do i have 6 partitions and you have only one ?
I'd say your update driver problem could come from there.

[Mocker]

eldon.t,

That's essentially what I did before... I did end up with 6 Mac partitions as viewed from Linux. What I meant was that I partitioned the disk within Mac OS, asking Disk Manager to make a single Mac partition the first time (which I guess translates into it actually making 6?) and the second time asking it to partition the disk into three pieces, one for Mac and 2 for Linux (which, behind the scenes ends up making 8 in total.)

I'll go through again and document what I'm doing, step by step:

1. Boot OS 9.2.1 from CD.
2. Run Drive Setup.
3. Selected the hard disk from the list of drives, and clicked Initialize...
4. Clicked Custom Setup
5. Left Partitioning Scheme as 1 Partition. Under Volume Info, changed the Size to 5-6GB, and click OK. That leaves most of the disk space as "Extra."
6. Clicked Initialize to initialize the disk, then quit Drive Setup.
7. Ran the Mac OS installer, installing on the newly initialized disk. Reboot.
8. Downloaded BootX 1.2.2.
9. Copied BootX Extension to the System Folder/Extensions folder.
10. Copied BootX App to System Folder/Control Panels folder.
11. Inserted the Xubuntu Jaunty Alternate CD.
12. Created a Linux Kernels folder in the System Folder directory.
13. Copied initrd.gz and vmlinux from the Xubuntu CD's install/powerpc folder to the Linux Kernels folder.
14. Started BootX from the Apple menu's Control Panel entry.
15. Clicked Options... next to the Kernel selector.
16. Selected Force SCSI ON (I seem to need this to get the CD to be recognized during the linux install... but I'm not sure it's a scsi CD...)
17. Selected Use specified RAM Disk.
18. A file selection window should pop up. Navigate to the System Folder's Linux Kernels folder, select initrd.gz. and clock Open.
19. Clicked OK to get back to the main BootX screen.
20. Changed the ramdisk size to 10420 or something larger.
21. Selected No video driver (I seem to need this when using my ATI PCI video card.... otherwise, the linux booting screen is just black).
22. Clicked Linux to boot Linux.
23. When the installer starts, go through the language selection, keyboard type, timezone, and computer name screens as appropriate (for me, English, USA, USA Macintosh keyboard).
24. On the Partition disks screen, selected Manual. Here I can see that the MacOS install has created 6 existing partitions.
25. Selected the Free Space entry in menu.
26. Selected Create a new partition.
27. Made the partition slightly smaller than the remaining disk space (238GB).
28. Selected Beginning as the location for the new partition.
29. Selected Use as and changed the type to Ext2. Partition is automatically set to be mounted as the / directory, with the bootable flag off.
30. Selected Done Setting Up partition.
31. Repeated the previous 6 steps, only this time, used all of the remaining disk space and selected swap area under Use As.
32. Selected Finished partitioning and write changes to disk.
33. Selected Yes when asked to write changes to disk.
34. Waited for a while as the installer creates partition #7 and formats it as Ext2, and installs the base system.
35. Set up user name and password, and select No when asked to encrypt the home directory.
36. Hit enter when asked for HTTP proxy info, and select Yes to download language support files.
37. Just hit Continue on the Software selection screen, figuring if it actually works, I can just install stuff later. It goes and installs some stuff anyhow...
38. Get to the screen Continue without boot loader, which tells me the boot loader has not been installed because I either chose not to or that the architecture doesn't support it. Hit Continue.
39. At the Finish the installation screen, I hit control-option-F2 to get to a console.
40. Entered

    mkdir /tmp/lin; mkdir /tmp/mac

41. Entered

    mount /dev/hda7 /tmp/lin

42. Entered

    mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda6 /tmp/mac

    (I found I needed to use hfsplus here, since otherwise the Mac partition wasn't mounted properly, and instead got a directory with just a file named "Where are all my files?" which indicated the file system couldn't be mounted using an older filesystem standard).
43. Enter

    cp -R /tmp/lin/boot /tmp/mac/Desktop\ Folder

44. Hit control-option-F1 to go back to the installer.
45. Selected No when asked if clock was set to UTC.
46. Replaced the Xubuntu CD with the Mac OS 9.2.1 CD when the drive opened.
47. Selected [B]Continue[\B] to reboot computer.
48. After Mac OS 9.2.1 boots, run Drive Setup.
49. Hard disk once again shows up as <not initialized>. The Update Driver command on the Functions menu remains dimmed out. Disk First Aid won't even recognize the drive.

So, I've tried this every way I can concieve of: let Mac OS create the partitions to install into, manually create them under the Xubuntu installer, have the Xubuntu installer do it through guided partitioning of the empty space, etc. I don't think the install process is actually messing things up by trying to install a bootloader... it seems to know it can't do that.

I guess I can try downloading a straight Debian install CD and see if that would work. This computer's eventual fate is to offered up for free on one of the local freecycle lists. I had thought that installing Xubuntu would make the machine more useful, while still relatively user-friendly. Straight Debian, as I recall, wasn't all that friendly.

[Mocker]

Apparently, I've solved my issue. It looks like larger hard disks (mine was a 250GB) really really confuse poor MacOS 9.2.1, such that anything touching the hard disk without its involvement (i.e. installing Linux) leaves it unable to cope with the hard disk. Or, possibly anything extending beyond it's built-in disk limitations really blows its little mind.

I figured this out after trying a Debian install, and also trying to install just up to the part where I partitioned the drive. In both cases, Mac OS decided the isk was uninitialized and would have nothing to do with it.

I did have an inkling about this, since I had noticed that MacOS would only see about 120GB of the disk overall (hardware seems to be able to access it all, since Linux sees the entire drive). Finally, I dug deep within the junk closet and found a 30GB Death... err Deskstar and tossed that into the Mac. After running yet another Debian install (canceling it halfway through) I was able to boot back into the OS 9 CD, and run Disk Manager to reinstall the disk drivers... and viola! The Mac OS 9 install on the hard disk is just fine. Now, I just need to try an actual Xubuntu install and see if that does the trick.