Yellow Dog Linux

I have recently purchased an Apple Powerbook G4 with Yellow Dog Linux installed on it. When it boots up there is a menu that has options for Yellow Dog, boot from CD-ROM, and boot from network. When I try to boot from a CD-ROM I get a message saying "Booting CDROM" and then it goes back to the same menu again. Sometimes I get into some type of prompt where it just says "boot: " and when I type in cd it says "/vmlinux: Not a valid ELF image". I would really like to boot from a CD or at least a USB drive so any help would be appreciated.

netopalis45 wrote:I have recently purchased an Apple Powerbook G4 with Yellow Dog Linux installed on it. When it boots up there is a menu that has options for Yellow Dog, boot from CD-ROM, and boot from network. When I try to boot from a CD-ROM I get a message saying "Booting CDROM" and then it goes back to the same menu again. Sometimes I get into some type of prompt where it just says "boot: " and when I type in cd it says "/vmlinux: Not a valid ELF image". I would really like to boot from a CD or at least a USB drive so any help would be appreciated.

You should be able to determine which version of YDL you have installed. I believe that YDL is designed to boot from the internal HD it is installed on. In other words, it would be best to choose the first option, to boot from Yellow Dog; this option will boot from the internal drive. I'm assuming that the installation was completed successfully the first time and you have a completely functioning YDL on the internal HD. If you don't you will have to install YDL yourself. You should also test whether YDL was installed to allow you to dual-boot between the Apple operating system which came with the G4 and YDL without difficulty.

Perhaps only YDL exists as an operating system on the internal HD - you'll have to determine for yourself what exists.

Booting from a CD is not impossible but the difficulty you may be having is that the CD which was burned may have a different vmlinux image that what the installed YDL recognizes. In short such a problem means that you have to burn a new DVD, not CD. I believe that from YDL 4 forward, the original designers of YDL, Terra Soft Solutions, switched from using CDs to DVD as the media used to boot YDL from.

Regardless whether you choose to attempt booting from either a DVD or CD you should realize that any Linux accessing any optical drive will be slow when compared to how YDL or Linux, behaves when it boots from the internal HD. Again accessing programs, files and much more is very much faster when YDL boots from the internal HD.