YDL4.1 on Beige G3 success

[Mikael Pettersson]

Just to let people know that YDL4.1 installs and runs fine on
my old-world Beige G3. I boot via MacOS9+BootX since I've never
been able to make quik work, and nowadays I need the MacOS9+BootX
path anyway to initialize my G4 upgrade CPU's caches.

Extract the non-G5 vmlinux and the ramdisk.image.gz from the
first install iso, put them on the MacOS9 disk where BootX
wants them, and boot with ramdisk enabled, ramdisk size 16384,
and "text" as kernel option.

At the end of the install the yaboot install will fail,
but that's expected and what we want.

I use my own kernels so I don't need initrds, but if you want
to use YDL's kernel, copy the initrd the installer put in /boot
to the MacOS9 disk where BootX can find it. You can probably
do that from the installer's shell window, although I did it
via a backup partition with my previous Linux (YDL4.0) install.

[reid anderson]

Post by Mikael Pettersson
Just to let people know that YDL4.1 installs and runs fine on
my old-world Beige G3. I boot via MacOS9+BootX since I've never
been able to make quik work, and nowadays I need the MacOS9+BootX
path anyway to initialize my G4 upgrade CPU's caches.
Extract the non-G5 vmlinux and the ramdisk.image.gz from the
first install iso, put them on the MacOS9 disk where BootX
wants them, and boot with ramdisk enabled, ramdisk size 16384,
and "text" as kernel option.
At the end of the install the yaboot install will fail,
but that's expected and what we want.
I use my own kernels so I don't need initrds, but if you want
to use YDL's kernel, copy the initrd the installer put in /boot
to the MacOS9 disk where BootX can find it. You can probably
do that from the installer's shell window, although I did it
via a backup partition with my previous Linux (YDL4.0) install.

I have tried to boot again using the settings you gave me, but no luck.
Apparently, 7300s can be problematic for installing using BootX. Which
is the initrd filein /boot? IWhich is the best folder to install it into?
Thanks for your help. :)

[Mikael Pettersson]

Post by reid anderson

Post by Mikael Pettersson
Just to let people know that YDL4.1 installs and runs fine on
my old-world Beige G3. I boot via MacOS9+BootX since I've never
been able to make quik work, and nowadays I need the MacOS9+BootX
path anyway to initialize my G4 upgrade CPU's caches.
Extract the non-G5 vmlinux and the ramdisk.image.gz from the
first install iso, put them on the MacOS9 disk where BootX
wants them, and boot with ramdisk enabled, ramdisk size 16384,
and "text" as kernel option.
At the end of the install the yaboot install will fail,
but that's expected and what we want.
I use my own kernels so I don't need initrds, but if you want
to use YDL's kernel, copy the initrd the installer put in /boot
to the MacOS9 disk where BootX can find it. You can probably
do that from the installer's shell window, although I did it
via a backup partition with my previous Linux (YDL4.0) install.

I have tried to boot again using the settings you gave me, but no luck.
Apparently, 7300s can be problematic for installing using BootX. Which
is the initrd filein /boot? IWhich is the best folder to install it into?

For initial install the kernel is the vmlinux from boot/ and the
ramdisk is the ramdisk.image.gz from images/, in the top-level
directory of the YDL install disc1. The vmlinux file goes into
MacOS9:System Folder:Linux Kernels:vmlinux
and the ramdisk.image.gz file goes into
MacOS9:System Folder:ramdisk.image.gz
assuming your MacOS9 partition is called 'MacOS9'.

(I don't know how MacOS9 would have referred to those paths; I'm
using hfsutils to access the MacOS9 partition from Linux.)

After install, there will be a vmlinux and an initrd in /boot
on the Linux partition; copy the vmlinux file to the same place
as before, and the initrd to MacOS9:System Folder:ramdisk.image.gz

If you can't make this work, then perhaps you should try an
older old-world supported release like YDL3.0.1 or YDL2.3.