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Currently enjoying sid on an 800mhz iBook G3, running with no DE and using strictly console apps. So far, I've gotten Pine email (actually Alpine, the more modern fork of it), moc (music player), ELinks (and Lynx, both web browsers), and netHack running on the machine, and am exploring the other neat console apps out there. Truly a geek iBook...
 
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Try restoring the image to a local partition on the machine, and boot from that.
I solved it! The last time I entered Open Firmware, I realized that the date was set to the 1970s, probably because the date resets itself after removing the battery. I thought that maybe this was what was causing the problem, so I set the actual date and time (https://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060814075952448) and now... It boots just fine.

Not putting a CMOS battery into this thing was truly a weird design decision. I wonder why they didn't.
 
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I wonder why they didn't do a lot of things.

Like giving Snow Leopard to the G5 so we wouldn't have to screw with Linux...
What is wrong is plain old leopard? It seems to me that the problem is lack of developer interest for this aging platform, rather than lack of Snow Leopard availability for PPC. Take a look at the enthusiast development for Windows XP (which is an 18 year old operating system, mind you) compared to the enthusiast development for Leopard and Tiger (which are objectively better operating systems). Windows XP, a nearly 2 decade old operating system, is far more usable for day to day tasks than either of those 2 operating systems are. Hell, it even has 4 actively developed, fully functional web browsers.

I've all but given up on PPC Linux. Never in my life have I encountered a bigger time sink. I have wintel shitboxes I can install ubuntu on in 15 minutes, and everything works out of the box. No fiddling around necessary.

I believe these PowerPC machines are best paired with the operating systems that were designed specifically for them. It's nice that BSD/Linux will "work", but the experience, in comparison, is half baked at best.
 
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What is wrong is plain old leopard? It seems to me that the problem is lack of developer interest for this aging platform, rather than lack of Snow Leopard availability for PPC.

I wasn't pinning it entirely on Snow Leopard availability, but in a nutshell, it was simply more optimized and supported for longer. It was entirely possible they could have done quite a bit of trimming while still retaining G5 support and stopping there.

I've all but given up on PPC Linux. Never in my life have I encountered a bigger time sink. I have wintel boxes I can install ubuntu on in 15 minutes, and everything works out of the box. No fiddling around necessary.

I think the biggest problem I've encountered with PPC Linux is lack of suspend functions. G5s, with how much power they suck, should really have the option to enter sleep modes. iBooks and PowerBooks, being portable systems that you open and close, likewise really need to be able to enter low-power states in between sessions.

I believe these PowerPC machines are best paired with the operating systems that were designed specifically for them. It's nice that BSD/Linux will "work", but the experience, in comparison, is half baked at best.

Perhaps the wisest course of action here is, for desktop machines, to keep a flavor of Linux installed on a smaller partition, just in case + for the newer applications, and Tiger / Leopard set to be the main everyday systems for their ease of use and reliability to function. Portables should probably stay exclusive to OS X.

That aside, I think it's very important to give proper credit and applaud to the people behind Linux for PowerPC, who have and continue to devote their free time and energy to development for a platform that's been long since abandoned, which is a far cry in principle and practice to Apple's teams previously numbering in the hundreds.

Though for what it's worth, my G5 and DLSD are very much enjoying their time on Tiger, which I believe was Apple's operating system peak.
 
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Yeah, you need to be a real masochist to mess with linux on PowerPC. Fortunately, I fall into that category and have had a measure of success on various machines, ranging from iBook G3 to DC G5. Of all my machines, only my Sawtooth with a Radeon 9000 and my DP 2.0ghz G5 (no idea why it's so damn choppy, even after I thought it was fixed with a new keyboard- don't ask) were failures. My 667mhz TiBook had to have its screen resolution put into yaboot.conf to avoid psychedelia, but works well otherwise.

Yes, it's a huge time sink, but if you *have* the time, that sink will shrink as you learn more. I can get a fully-functioning PPC linux box/notebook up and running with a desktop environment, web browser, email, wifi, accelerated graphics, video (360p-720p, depending on the machine) and useful apps in about an hour now.

But that's just me. I like to tinker and love the challenge. It's not for everyone, and totally understandable as it can be extremely frustrating at times.

I'm going to take a short break from all of this to work on my new toy- a 1973 TV Ping Pong arcade machine. TTL logic and linear power supply goodness, with a black and white TV instead of a monitor, no less!

tvpong.jpg


tvpong2.jpg


I wonder if linux would run on that...

(Posted from my TiBook 1.0ghz running sid)
 
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That aside, I think it's very important to give proper credit and applaud to the people behind Linux for PowerPC, who have and continue to devote their free time and energy to development for a platform that's been long since abandoned, which is a far cry in principle and practice to Apple's teams previously numbering in the hundreds.

Though for what it's worth, my G5 and DLSD are very much enjoying their time on Tiger, which I believe was Apple's operating system peak.
Of course, I do appreciate the few people who have put time, and effort into PowerPC Linux. They have come an awfully long way, especially considering the challenges they face, and what they've had to work with. The problem lies in the fact that there aren't ENOUGH developers interested, to take the it over the top. I don't mean to sound ungrateful at all.
 
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I only now realized that the instructions here for booting into the install USB have been rendered invalid with the recent advent of GRUB-enabled installation images, thus making this guide invalid for what has probably been most of May. So, the download link has been fixed to point to the 4-20 images, and not only that, the mirror install process has been greatly simplified.

GRUB installation worked on a G5, though has not been tested on a G4. If it fails, we'll have to put the manual process back up. I'm just hoping it will be nice, and play ball with at least most machines...
 
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I only now realized that the instructions here for booting into the install USB have been rendered invalid with the advent of GRUB-enabled installation images, thus making this guide invalid for probably most of May. So, the download link has been fixed to point to the 4-20 images, and not only that, the mirror install process has been greatly simplified.

GRUB installation worked on a G5, though has not been tested on a G4. If it fails, we'll have to put the manual process back up. I'm just hoping it will be nice, and play ball with at least most machines...

Oops. I had changed the link to 5-24, due to a Facebook post, about 30 minutes ago, but I just changed it back. Sorry about that...
 
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Added Spiderweb to the new post-install list, among various other tweaks.
 
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Hi swamprock and all! Thank you so much for this topic, it made me creating an account. I am a PowerPC fan for so long ... and a Linux user too.
I want to install Debian on a MacMini but it failed with an ISO downloaded earlier this month. After I added the apt repositories, I had error about NO_PUBKEY errors and no gpg tool installed.
I then tried yesterday (still using an USB key) with the latest ISO and on the boot command in OpenFirmware I always had errors about MAC partition, like:
MAC-PARTS: specified MAC partition is not valid can't OPEN usb1/disk@1:2,\\yaboot

Has anyone succeeded in installing Debian on a MacMini? Or got the same errors?

Note: In the installation procedure, at step 1, the written date of the ISO does not match the link.
 
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Hi swamprock and all! Thank you so much for this topic, it made me creating an account. I am a PowerPC fan for so long ... and a Linux user too.

Nice to meet you! Welcome to the forums!

I want to install Debian on a MacMini but it failed with an ISO downloaded earlier this month. After I added the apt repositories, I had error about NO_PUBKEY errors and no gpg tool installed.

Which image did you use? I've only seen that happen on the May 2018 images.

I then tried yesterday (still using an USB key) with the latest ISO and on the boot command in OpenFirmware I always had errors about MAC partition, like:
MAC-PARTS: specified MAC partition is not valid can't OPEN usb1/disk@1:2,\\yaboot
Has anyone succeeded in installing Debian on a MacMini? Or got the same errors?

That's why I didn't link to the 5-24 images. They take advantage of the newer GRUB bootloader instead of the older Yaboot bootloader, but GRUB still has some kinks, like using different Open Firmware boot paths, and at the moment, failing to fully boot into the installer. So for now, we're going to keep using the Yaboot images.

But that's strange, I thought swamprock already fixed the link to point back to the 4-20 rollout...

In any case, it's been fixed. Re-download, and try again. Use the same OF command you tried.
 
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z970mp: Thank you very much! I tried today and the installation worked well ... until I choose "continue" after the failure of the GRUB installation. Reading again the topic, I understand that I have to follow part of the old procedure. I will retry a full installation as soon as possible.
 
z970mp: Thank you very much! I tried today and the installation worked well ... until I choose "continue" after the failure of the GRUB installation. Reading again the topic, I understand that I have to follow part of the old procedure. I will retry a full installation as soon as possible.

I was afraid of that happening.

Try once more. The newly-revised section is located under step 6a.
 
z970mp: I tried at least 6 times to reinstall these last days with no success. I followed step 6a. I get no error but each time after a reboot, it does not start yaboot (staying on the display of the Mac folder smiling). The HFS partition does not seem to be recognized. Note that when I retry an installation, at the partitionning step, the disk is always shown with a single HFS partition of the disk size, in my case 60 GB.

I tried on a MacMini at 1.3 GHz (PowerMac 10,2), with different settings: a smaller (800 KB or 1 MB) HFS partition, an ext2 partition for /boot, a single Linux partition in ext3, ...

I really wanted to install a clean and recent Debian but I consumed more time than I had.
 
z970mp: I tried at least 6 times to reinstall these last days with no success. I followed step 6a. I get no error but each time after a reboot, it does not start yaboot (staying on the display of the Mac folder smiling). The HFS partition does not seem to be recognized. Note that when I retry an installation, at the partitionning step, the disk is always shown with a single HFS partition of the disk size, in my case 60 GB.

That shouldn't be happening...

If you're manually partitioning, take a photo of the finished tables so we can see how everything's partitioned.

I tried on a MacMini at 1.3 GHz (PowerMac 10,2), with different settings: a smaller (800 KB or 1 MB) HFS partition, an ext2 partition for /boot, a single Linux partition in ext3, ...

I really wanted to install a clean and recent Debian but I consumed more time than I had.

Did you try the automatic partitioning? In either case, did you indeed install Yaboot to /dev/sda2, as per 6a?

I wouldn't recommend making the HFS bootloader partition any smaller than 1 MB, if you're installing Yaboot. Reliability is not guaranteed afterward.
 
I tried automatic partitioning that creates:
- a 32 KB Apple partition
- a 20 MB HFS partition, with flags B and K
- a 58.5 GB Linux partition with flag f and entry point /
- a 507 MB swap partition with flag f

I strictly followed the procedure at point 6a and saw no error (enabling verbose mode to see details).

I don't know if there are restrictions due to the firmware version, the MAC model, ...

I also searched for information and compared with an old installation on another MacMini (installed with Debian that I painfully upgraded to the current one and with Ubuntu Mate 16). So I'm not very confident to try on another MacMini or on my iMacG5 (even if it seems that G5 are well supported).
 
Stupid question, but when you hold down Option and are presented with the boot picker, does a nameless partition show up with a penguin in the corner? Successful Yaboot installations should allow you to boot from there.

As a last effort, try tooling with Open Firmware the same way the boot video in post #1 details, but replace 'usb' with 'hd'. (Ex. boot hd:2,\\yaboot, boot hd/disk@1:2,\\yaboot, boot hd:, etc.) Ensure there aren't any disks connected besides the single one inside the machine.

Aside from that, I'm kind of stumped. Maybe we should wait until GRUB is fixed for G4s so we'll be able to take a proper crack at it.

In the meantime, might I recommend an earlier version of Debian or Ubuntu? They can be found (with install guides) in The Linux Thread.
 
I have no icon with a penguin, but always only one, with the Mac folder and the question mark.

I already tried to jump to the yaboot console trying hd:2,\\yaboot but with no luck. I don't understand. Note that I often face this kind of unexpected behaviour. Maybe for this reason I am a software tester (and developer, moreover).

Thank you for the link to earlier versions but I already have these ones basically working on another Mac Mini (and another PPC Linux on my AmigaOne X1000 too). I wanted to enjoy the latest Debian, test this great procedure and maybe contribute testing the updates.
 
As a last resort, I'd either zero out the drive and start over, or replace it with a different hard drive altogether and try again. Maybe zero out that one too, just to be safe.

Would your Mini happen to have an SSD installed? If not, this might be a great opportunity to give one a shot.
 
Updated guide and installation process to use latest images. Also updated wording / styling to better align with the main Wiki.
 
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Yeah, you need to be a real masochist to mess with linux on PowerPC. Fortunately, I fall into that category and have had a measure of success on various machines, ranging from iBook G3 to DC G5. Of all my machines, only my Sawtooth with a Radeon 9000 and my DP 2.0ghz G5 (no idea why it's so damn choppy, even after I thought it was fixed with a new keyboard- don't ask) were failures. My 667mhz TiBook had to have its screen resolution put into yaboot.conf to avoid psychedelia, but works well otherwise.

Yes, it's a huge time sink, but if you *have* the time, that sink will shrink as you learn more. I can get a fully-functioning PPC linux box/notebook up and running with a desktop environment, web browser, email, wifi, accelerated graphics, video (360p-720p, depending on the machine) and useful apps in about an hour now.

But that's just me. I like to tinker and love the challenge. It's not for everyone, and totally understandable as it can be extremely frustrating at times.

I'm going to take a short break from all of this to work on my new toy- a 1973 TV Ping Pong arcade machine. TTL logic and linear power supply goodness, with a black and white TV instead of a monitor, no less!

tvpong.jpg


tvpong2.jpg


I wonder if linux would run on that...

(Posted from my TiBook 1.0ghz running sid)


How did I miss this post , WOW , I also love old arcades , have a crush for pinballs , do you have to restore it from a not working condition ?
 
How did I miss this post , WOW , I also love old arcades , have a crush for pinballs , do you have to restore it from a not working condition ?

Yeah. I got the board to come up on a different CRT, but have to track down some bad ICs. Pretty easy with a logic probe and schematic. The TV that the game came with needs some repair as well, but these old TVs are easy to fix. I've been chipping away at it little by little...
 
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