Any Tip or tricks to share
Hello All, I appreciate the time you take to give me any tips or tricks on installing Suse 10.1 on a G5. I have never installed on a ppc before and I plan on using a separate drive keeping my existing mac os(tiger) as it is. I plan on going with lilo as the boot loader since I am more familiar with it. I am just looking for any 'heads up' you can give me. I have installed 10.1 on a pc with no problems at all, they were all great installs but I seem to value my mac much more than any windows pc(sorry, just being honest) I was hoping you could tell me if suse 10.1 installs as easy on the mac. Once again, thank you for your time. Amy A.
You can't use lilo on a PowerMac. You have to use yaboot.
I'm unfamiliar with using 2 drives with one having OS X on it. Linux
needs to have a 32MB(or larger) Apple_HFS partition on it so that
yaboot can be installed to boot.
Good luck!
-----Original Message-----
From: Amy A.
On Tue, Jul 11, Amy A. wrote:
I am just looking for any 'heads up' you can give me. I have installed 10.1 on a pc with no problems at all, they were all great installs but I seem to value my mac much more than any windows pc(sorry, just being honest) I was hoping you could tell me if suse 10.1 installs as easy on the mac.
The partitioner allows you to use the whole drive, just select /dev/sdb instead of 'Custom partition setup for experts...' I currently dont know how it handles an uninitialized drive without partition table, just use the OSX tool to initialize the second drive. To use dualboot between OSX and SuSE, append these two lines to /etc/lilo.conf: other=/dev/sdaN label=macos The YaST bootloader cant do that right now.
On Thu, Jul 13, Olaf Hering wrote:
On Tue, Jul 11, Amy A. wrote:
I am just looking for any 'heads up' you can give me. I have installed 10.1 on a pc with no problems at all, they were all great installs but I seem to value my mac much more than any windows pc(sorry, just being honest) I was hoping you could tell me if suse 10.1 installs as easy on the mac.
The partitioner allows you to use the whole drive, just select /dev/sdb instead of 'Custom partition setup for experts...' I currently dont know how it handles an uninitialized drive without partition table, just use the OSX tool to initialize the second drive.
I just tried it, using an uninitialized drive or a drive with an empty partition map is not handled correctly. Sorry for that... Try to follow the instructions on opensuse.org. http://en.opensuse.org/PPC_Partitioning
On Thursday 13 July 2006 06:01, Olaf Hering wrote:
On Thu, Jul 13, Olaf Hering wrote:
On Tue, Jul 11, Amy A. wrote:
I am just looking for any 'heads up' you can give me. I have installed 10.1 on a pc with no problems at all, they were all great installs but I seem to value my mac much more than any windows pc(sorry, just being honest) I was hoping you could tell me if suse 10.1 installs as easy on the mac.
The partitioner allows you to use the whole drive, just select /dev/sdb instead of 'Custom partition setup for experts...' I currently dont know how it handles an uninitialized drive without partition table, just use the OSX tool to initialize the second drive.
I just tried it, using an uninitialized drive or a drive with an empty partition map is not handled correctly. Sorry for that...
Try to follow the instructions on opensuse.org. http://en.opensuse.org/PPC_Partitioning =========
Ok, this brings up a question. Is the partitioning tool in SuSE still not working as it should for an empty drive? You are saying here, if a drive has not been formatted before or wiped of any format, special things have to be done to get the partitioning tool to handle it? Is this the case no matter what the computer, Mac or Pegasus? I am confused with some of this, haven't tried it yet, so no experience with how things are handled. If I have a Mac and want to wipe everything from the hard drive to install SuSE, can that be done with the partitioning tool as with the i386? I understand, I think, that if you want to do a dual boot, you have to resize with some Mac tool, before installing Linux, because the SuSE tool will not resize as it does with Windows drives? If not, will these be fixed? Sorry, if these sound like elementary questions, but I thought I understood the procedure during the 10.0 release for the PPC, but I'm not sure I do now. thanks, Lee
On Thu, Jul 13, BandiPat wrote:
Ok, this brings up a question. Is the partitioning tool in SuSE still not working as it should for an empty drive? You are saying here, if a drive has not been formatted before or wiped of any format, special things have to be done to get the partitioning tool to handle it? Is this the case no matter what the computer, Mac or Pegasus? I am confused with some of this, haven't tried it yet, so no experience with how things are handled.
I used an OS9 formated drive during my 10.1 testing, here "whole disk" worked. It offered the existing MacOS partition for removal and splitted it into boot, root and swap. But for some reason I did not retest the empty disk case. And as a result, it is not working correctly in 10.1. For Pegasos you still need to do manual partitioning with parted.
If I have a Mac and want to wipe everything from the hard drive to install SuSE, can that be done with the partitioning tool as with the i386? I understand, I think, that if you want to do a dual boot, you have to resize with some Mac tool, before installing Linux, because the SuSE tool will not resize as it does with Windows drives? If not, will these be fixed?
HFS resizing does not work due to lack of tools. So for 10.1 its basically the same procedure as every year: to initalize the disk, use MacOS tools or do it manually with pdisk or parted. The expert partitioner can remove and create partitions now, thats new.
On Thursday 13 July 2006 09:44, Olaf Hering wrote:
On Thu, Jul 13, BandiPat wrote:
Ok, this brings up a question. Is the partitioning tool in SuSE still not working as it should for an empty drive? You are saying here, if a drive has not been formatted before or wiped of any format, special things have to be done to get the partitioning tool to handle it? Is this the case no matter what the computer, Mac or Pegasus? I am confused with some of this, haven't tried it yet, so no experience with how things are handled.
I used an OS9 formated drive during my 10.1 testing, here "whole disk" worked. It offered the existing MacOS partition for removal and splitted it into boot, root and swap. But for some reason I did not retest the empty disk case. And as a result, it is not working correctly in 10.1.
For Pegasos you still need to do manual partitioning with parted.
If I have a Mac and want to wipe everything from the hard drive to install SuSE, can that be done with the partitioning tool as with the i386? I understand, I think, that if you want to do a dual boot, you have to resize with some Mac tool, before installing Linux, because the SuSE tool will not resize as it does with Windows drives? If not, will these be fixed?
HFS resizing does not work due to lack of tools. So for 10.1 its basically the same procedure as every year: to initalize the disk, use MacOS tools or do it manually with pdisk or parted.
The expert partitioner can remove and create partitions now, thats new. =========
Ok, thanks Olaf, that helps clarify things a bit for me. I guess, I just need to play a bit, to get a feel for things. Sounds like the PPC build has a ways to go yet, but I'm hoping there will be continued interest enough to keep it going. Now if we can only find some cheap sources for PPC hardware! ;-) Oh, no need to send two replies, I get list mail, so that will be adequate for me. thanks again, Lee
On Thursday 13 July 2006 06:01, Olaf Hering wrote: [...]
I just tried it, using an uninitialized drive or a drive with an empty partition map is not handled correctly. Sorry for that...
Try to follow the instructions on opensuse.org. http://en.opensuse.org/PPC_Partitioning ==========
Ok, sorry, should have read before I wrote. The link you provided did explain some things that I asked, I think. ;-) I suppose the best thing to do is just get some hardware to experiment on to get the best feel for it all. Anyone got a dual G5 they would like to loan out for a few months? ;-) regards, Lee
I agree with Lee and George, using a second hard drive is definitely the way to go. In this manner, you can remove the wires from one hard drive or the other if you have to for certain maintenance tasks in the future. For instance, I like to run applejack on my mac hard drive but booting into single user mode is incompatible with the dual boot configuration I will discuss below. Remove your mac os hard drive from the computer and set it aside. Presumably it was in the top bay. Install your new hard drive into the top bay. (You will find the little mounting screws inside your computer.) Install Suse completely before reinstalling the mac hard drive. As you know, Suse reboots after installing disk 1, and on a couple of occasions I have had the mac os boot (from the second hard drive!) at that point. You want to avoid that frustration altogether and at the same time have the peace of mind that comes with knowing there is no way you are messing up your mac data while you install suse. At the beginning when you are installing Suse, take a close look at how it wants to set up the partitioning. I have noticed that if I am reinstalling Suse, and even if I have selected New Install (rather than update) it will not remove the old root partition but rather split a new one off the space that had previously been allocated for my home partition. If that happens, go to the bottom of that page and modify the partitioning scheme. Manually tell it to use the whole disk. Then you should get the same number and sizes of partitions that you had before. Another option is to insert your tiger dvd, (boot holding command-E to open the dvd tray, then hit the power button once to turn off the machine and again to restart, the tray will go in, hold down c and you will boot from the tiger dvd) and use the drive setup utility to format the hard drive. Choose one single partition of type free space. Then exit that program, shutdown, boot with command-E, remove tiger dvd, insert Suse disk 1, power off, power on. Once you get Suse completely installed and running, shutdown and install your mac hard drive. For dual boot purposes, you will want to have the mac hard drive in the second (lower) bay. Now reboot (Suse will boot). Go to My Computer, and find your mac hard drive. Right click (grab a two button mouse off one of those pcs of yours!), go to Properties, Meta Info and write down the device node (mine is /dev/sdb3). Start a Terminal shell and enter the following code: su (password) nano /etc/lilo.conf modify lilo.conf by adding these lines to the end: other=/dev/sdb3 label=macos (use your mac hard drive device node!) If you want, you can also change the default os to macos (I like this, then other people aren't messing around with my Suse): change the default line to: default = macos to save and exit: control-o, return, control-x Now you must run lilo to set up the configurations you entered! While still in root: /sbin/lilo When you boot, as soon as you hear the chime hold down the space bar for linux or do nothing and it will boot into the macos. If one of the linux partitions appears on your mac desktop (always does on mine), immediately eject it. Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes. Steve __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Thank you VERY MUCH! I am going to go ahead and disconnect the main hard drive and use the second drive, WD Serial ATA hard drive to install SuSe as a full install. It currently has Mandriva on it, so I am hoping that SuSe will not complain about it. I will let you know which os runs faster, I like the mac os, but I miss linux. Amy A. Stephen K Dickeson wrote:
I agree with Lee and George, using a second hard drive is definitely the way to go. In this manner, you can remove the wires from one hard drive or the other if you have to for certain maintenance tasks in the future. For instance, I like to run applejack on my mac hard drive but booting into single user mode is incompatible with the dual boot configuration I will discuss below.
Remove your mac os hard drive from the computer and set it aside. Presumably it was in the top bay. Install your new hard drive into the top bay. (You will find the little mounting screws inside your computer.) Install Suse completely before reinstalling the mac hard drive. As you know, Suse reboots after installing disk 1, and on a couple of occasions I have had the mac os boot (from the second hard drive!) at that point. You want to avoid that frustration altogether and at the same time have the peace of mind that comes with knowing there is no way you are messing up your mac data while you install suse.
At the beginning when you are installing Suse, take a close look at how it wants to set up the partitioning. I have noticed that if I am reinstalling Suse, and even if I have selected New Install (rather than update) it will not remove the old root partition but rather split a new one off the space that had previously been allocated for my home partition. If that happens, go to the bottom of that page and modify the partitioning scheme. Manually tell it to use the whole disk. Then you should get the same number and sizes of partitions that you had before. Another option is to insert your tiger dvd, (boot holding command-E to open the dvd tray, then hit the power button once to turn off the machine and again to restart, the tray will go in, hold down c and you will boot from the tiger dvd) and use the drive setup utility to format the hard drive. Choose one single partition of type free space. Then exit that program, shutdown, boot with command-E, remove tiger dvd, insert Suse disk 1, power off, power on.
Once you get Suse completely installed and running, shutdown and install your mac hard drive. For dual boot purposes, you will want to have the mac hard drive in the second (lower) bay. Now reboot (Suse will boot). Go to My Computer, and find your mac hard drive. Right click (grab a two button mouse off one of those pcs of yours!), go to Properties, Meta Info and write down the device node (mine is /dev/sdb3).
Start a Terminal shell and enter the following code:
su (password) nano /etc/lilo.conf
modify lilo.conf by adding these lines to the end:
other=/dev/sdb3 label=macos
(use your mac hard drive device node!)
If you want, you can also change the default os to macos (I like this, then other people aren't messing around with my Suse):
change the default line to: default = macos
to save and exit: control-o, return, control-x
Now you must run lilo to set up the configurations you entered! While still in root:
/sbin/lilo
When you boot, as soon as you hear the chime hold down the space bar for linux or do nothing and it will boot into the macos. If one of the linux partitions appears on your mac desktop (always does on mine), immediately eject it. Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
Steve
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participants (5)
-
Amy A. -
BandiPat -
larrystotler＠netscape.net -
Olaf Hering -
Stephen K Dickeson