Yellow Dog Linux

Hey folks,

I am encountering severe problems booting my iBook G4 1,33 GHz (model late 2004 I believe) with a Combo Drive only.
Booting the install DVD fails, the DVD is recognized as boot medium when I press [ALT] during booting, but then the screen turns grey and that pretty much is it. Same results with an external dvd drive connected by Firewire.

Ok, my internal combo drive may not be the fittest any more and booting from external devices via usb or firewire is probably not supported according the hardware page, so I tried out the netboot option. I extracted the iso image, burnt it on a blank cd (even with different OS, cds from different manufacturers and various writer software), set up a http server on RHEL and copied the necessary files there. But once again: boot fails on the iBook G4. When pressing [ALT] the cd is not recognized as bootable medium, when I press [c] instead the iBook boots to a blue screen where I get a folder with a "?", which means the operating system cannot be found.

The download went well and the checksums do match. The iBook is standard equipment, no extra hardware (but an additional 1 GB RAM which worked fine in OS X 10.5x for years) has been added.

Ideas on how to get YDL 6.2 to work on my iBook?
Why is the netboot image not recognized? I'm clueless.

Any help appreciated.

A few more words:

I just managed to boot Ubuntu 10.04 PPC version fine from the very same cdrw medium that I used for the installation of the netboot image before and it works fine. Therefore both medium and hardware are okay. (I am writing this using the live cd of Ubuntu.)

Can I maybe use the Ubuntu boot cd to boot into the netinstall image on my webserver? If so how?

Hi, Aquazone.

Have you successful done de installation of YDL on iBook G4? If you did so, could you tell me how was the trip?
I beg you to give me a reply, because I have tried it too much with a lot of Linux distributions... and I don't want to drop that good machine on the trash.

Thanks!

rubiomedeiros wrote:Hi, Aquazone

Just so you know, Aquazone hasn't logged into this forum since Dec. 2011.

Generally - you'll have more success starting a new topic, rather than responding to a dead one. But - that's just my advice. We only have two real forum rules - no duplicate posts and no topic piggybacking.

Also - I'd try answering your question, but I'm a PS3 user, and these kinds of issues are different. I haven't tried installing it on a Macintosh yet - so I'm afraid I'm not much help here. I hope that a Mac user sees this post and responds.

Cheers,
Paul

Fortunately there is email notification.

I gave up on YDL on my Mac back then cause for every problem solved I got two new ones. But I will give it a new shot soon. I'll give the dog another try and will most likely try another linux distro as well.

So hang on, I can share my experience with you.