Trying to Install YDL PPC to Give It A Fair Eval

[motsteve]

I'll try not to bore people with the whys and wherefors of my question, I just want to know
if it is possible to pack YDL6 PPC into a single partition, tack it onto the back of a
bootable drive with another Linux distro and enable them to selectively boot and share
a common swap space. To be more specific, below is the map of my drive:

/dev/hdd
# type name length base ( size ) system
/dev/hdd1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hdd2 Apple_Bootstrap untitled 1954 @ 64 (977.0k) NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hdd3 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled 122880001 @ 2018 ( 58.6G) Linux native
/dev/hdd4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 4096001 @ 122882019 ( 2.0G) Linux swap
/dev/hdd5 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled 163840001 @ 126978020 ( 78.1G) Linux native
/dev/hdd6 Apple_Free Extra 197579147 @ 290818021 ( 94.2G) Free space

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=488397168
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

Debian Etch is now booting from this drive via yaboot/ybin. Debian / is /dev/hdd3 and,
obviously /dev/hdd4 is the swap space. I would like to put YDL6 on /dev/hdd5 and use
/dev/hdd4 as swap. It's my understanding that I should be able to add the /dev/hdd5
partition to boot in the yaboot configuration. I know I have to modify fstab to get it
to use /dev/hdd4 as swap, but that is easily done. I've done this in another drive that
I have, but those two disro's are Debian and Ubuntu and are very similar in structure.
My problem seems to be with YDL6, openSuse, etc that use some kind of hocus pocus and
the MBR to boot. I really like both Debian and Ubuntu a lot, but I want to give YDL6
a chance, but I don't want to dedicate an entire drive on it for that purpose. The
last time I put YDL6 on an entire drive, I used it for about four hours, got ticked
off and blasted the drive into bit bucket heaven and threw my install disk in the dust
bin. This is not fair, but sharing a disk is acceptable to as a compromise so that I can give
it a reasonable evaluation.

BTW, I have tried to install YDL6 in that empty space using the Anaconda installer and
the results almost resulted in the bit bucket/dust bin action again, so let's not go
there.

[ppietro]

I've done this in another drive that
I have, but those two disro's are Debian and Ubuntu and are very similar in structure.
My problem seems to be with YDL6, openSuse, etc that use some kind of hocus pocus and
the MBR to boot. I really like both Debian and Ubuntu a lot, but I want to give YDL6
a chance, but I don't want to dedicate an entire drive on it for that purpose.

I don't have an Apple - I'm a PS3 owner - so I can't help with your specific request.

But - I will mention that, if you're a rabid fan of Debian & Ubuntu, you will probably feel slightly uncomfortable in YDL. It's a Red Hat based Linux, like Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and - to some extent - SuSE. (Although SuSE was originally based on slackware Linux, it's incorporated many Red Hat linux features - like RPMs and /etc/sysconfig). This might help to set your expectations accordingly.

In fact - YDL 6.0 is extremely similar to CentOS 5.1, since it's based on that source tree now. If you had access to an x86 emulator (like VMWare, Virtual Box, etc.), you could run CentOS and get a feel for what YDL is like. (It's not exactly the same - YDL has many more programs than CentOS - but the base OS is the same.)

Because it's Red Hat based, and not debian based, YDL probably won't do the same boot tricks as debian/ubuntu, either. Even though YDL 6.0 is using /etc/yaboot.conf, I'm not exactly sure which boot manager they're using - especially on Apples. (The PS3 has a non-writable firmware that appears to run a customized Sony version of kboot. So - in this regard, Ubuntu, YDL, and Fedora all have to conform to the Sony bootloader and not the other way around. )

Cheers,
Paul

[motsteve]

Thanks for the reply Paul. I do have a iMac and do use Fusion to run Linux on my vm's. I have Centos and I'll try it more. I put it on the vm along with the other i386 Linux's that I have, but I haven't used it all that much. I'm an engineer and I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not giving YDL more of a chance after putting it on a drive on my PPC, but what ever it was doing got me so mad I lost my cool. I have the same problem with Fedora only Fedora has the double whammy of having what I consider a snooty following. They won't give you the time of day on the forum and their comments on there a bit hard to take. They're proud to state that Fedora is "bleeding edge" technology, but what this means is that they're on alpha releases that they call final candidates so that they can claim new features which barely work and when someone states a problem with the release they are ridiculed and snubbed worse than they are normally snubbed to begin with. It's doubling hard for people like you and me who have PPC based machines. If you can possibly install either Debian or Ubuntu on your PS3, I would highly recommend them. They are both very stable and easy to work with and have a loyal following of people who will help if they can.

BTW, I'm a radio engineer and not a software engineer. I learned to love Unix when I was doing ic design work. I have also had a Mac since day one of the Mac. I was the fourth person to buy a Mac in Broward county before they were shipped in February of 1984. I should also say that the Mac PPC uses open firmware for booting. The iMac uses EFI. Both schemes are well engineered and documented as standards. EFI being an Intel standard will probably become the defacto boot manager in future computers.

[billb]

Though I can't help with this particular issue, I would like to chime in and say that I haven't been particularly impressed with the responses I've seen to some of the users on Fedora Forums. I have been able to get some help there before, but only for non-PPC related issues. Generally, if the moderators see PPC, Mac, or PS3 in a post they automatically move the post to the PPC subforum and make no attempt to help. I can't write off the whole forum though -- there are some helpful people on there. You just have to word your posts carefully! Between that and some of the newer features added to Fedora in v8 and v9 I quit using it completely (for example -- pulseaudio in v8 and packagekit in v9 were particularly troublesome).

[ppietro]

It's doubling hard for people like you and me who have PPC based machines. If you can possibly install either Debian or Ubuntu on your PS3, I would highly recommend them. They are both very stable and easy to work with and have a loyal following of people who will help if they can.

Yes - both are available for the PS3. In fact, I just finished installing debian on the PS3 after a hard disc upgrade, just to see how it well it worked.

It was... okay. I played around with it for a while, but decided to re-install YDL 6.0. But - that's mainly me.

I'm a software tester, and for a long time, I worked at a company testing the performance of PC X Windows software connecting to Unix/Linux hosts. I had to set up and maintain a number of Unix/Linux hosts on some pretty weird hardware - HP/UX, Tru64, AIX, A/UX, SuSE, Solaris, Red Hat, debian, Yellow Dog, FreeBSD, Darwin - and found I had two clear preferences: Solaris and Red Hat. Solaris was my fave of the System V Unixes. And Red Hat was my fave of the Linuxes.

Now - for PPC - Yellow Dog is special. They, along with PPC Linux, were the first to do Linux for PowerPC platforms. (I used to run PPC Linux on IBM's Carolina prototype hardware, and Yellow Dog on a Power Computing mac clone.) Because of their deep experience with the processor, and their knowledge of the hardware, I've found that YDL is a good match for PowerPC. Also, since they were based on Red Hat, they were in a unique position to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the distribution, and even contributed the concept of YUM to the community. (YUM stands for Yellow Dog Updater Modified, and is a re-write of YUP - the original Yellow Dog Updater. YUM has been adopted by most of the Red Hat distributions - including Red Hat and Yellow Dog itself.)

I've also found the TerraSoft folks - those who publish Yellow Dog - to be pretty cool. Plus - this forum is very helpful, I hope.

That being said, YDL has been focused on Cell/B.E. based computers lately - like the PS3 and IBM Blade servers. I can't speak to how well it works on Macs anymore - it's been years since I ran any version of Linux on a Mac - but for the PS3, YDL is a very compelling solution.

Cheers,
Paul

P.S. My fave OS of all time? Hard to say - but let me put it this way. One of the few OSes I actually went out and purchased - as opposed to downloading for free like Linux/openSolaris, or had pre-installed like Windows - was BeOS. Damn - I really miss that operating system.

Oddly enough, there is a PowerPC version. If only Sony would release a boot loader for it for the PS3.

[motsteve]

This is a weird feeling being on a forum that is so positive. I agree with and understand why everyone feels they way they do with Linux on the PPC. Back when Red Hat was first starting and I think they were putting out their first commercial distro, they came out with a ppc distro and I bought it because that is when things were still new and distro dowload sites didn't grow on trees. This was before Mac OSX was available and I wanted Unix on my Mac after having it on my Sun workstation for ic design and pc board layout. I have nothing but good things to say about Red Hat and the people back then. I also had a copy of YDL to try out, but back then everything was on floppies and SLOW was the name of the game with installations, etc. The beta copies of Mac OSX were starting to come out also, so I ended up following that as I'm a real Mac'er from day one and OSX being based on BSD put the nail into the coffin. I didn't follow the split up of Red Hat into Fedora non-commercial distro and didn't get any early core releases of Fedora. I just was happy with the OSX and also with SunOS at work. I was forced into retirement by the breakup of the company which is still in its final throws now and I started having more time for my favorite hobby and that's learning the OS's on a more admin level.

When I bought my iMac, I got Fusion and started getting into virtualization, at first to enable me to run some applications on, yuk, Windoz. Once I understood the basics of virtualization I saw all the free distro's of Linux around and decided to get back into that, but absolutely no one was around who had ever done that on Fusion because all they cared about was that sorry sack of crap, Windoz. I started putting on more and more distro's on my iMac and then I got so many that I started having to throw some of them out because my 250G drive was filling up. Then it hit me, that my G4 Mac was still a good machine and it was just sitting there waiting for me to notice. That's when my interest in Linux really took off. Now I go from forum to forum trying to get all my distro's to be fully functional, but learning all this admin stuff helter skelter using nothing but Google is a real challenge. It's a real challenge, only more so, with PPC. Things like Flash are just starting to work on Linux, but only on the i386 stuff. That's where all the experts are also. TerraSoft and IBM are about the only game in town now left on the PPC platform. It's bad enough that there are three booting systems for Linux on personal computers, but now I'm adding a not very well supported platform. What a challenge.

If only I could figure out how to stuff YDL6 on my d drive, I'll be off to the races again.