On Feb 28 2019, David Faure faure@kde.org wrote:
I'm trying to install tumbleweed ppc64 onto an old Mac G5 for a friend (completely replacing the old OS X on the machine). The install (from a DVD-RW) actually went fine... but I can't boot into it. All I see on boot is the finder icon alternating with a "?", like it can't find any boot partition or boot code. The installer did create a "PowerPC PreP boot" partition on /dev/sda1, but somehow the ?BIOS? doesn't find it?
PReP is for IBM POWER systems, useless for Mac.
You need a mac disk label, with a Apple_Bootstrap partition formatted as hfs with a special layout. The ppc version of lilo can format such a boot partition. I don't know if grub has support for booting a Mac.
On my G5 with oS 13.1 it looks like this:
# hmount /dev/sda2 Volume name is "SuSE Linux boot partition" Volume was created on Tue Nov 10 00:40:11 2009 Volume was last modified on Mon Feb 25 20:48:59 2019 Volume has 131373056 bytes free # hls -l suseboot f FNDR/MACS 286 0 Sep 14 1999 Finder f tbxi/chrp 0 2429 Feb 25 20:48 os-chooser f zsys/MACS 243673 0 May 25 2001 System f BINA/UNIX 0 487296 Feb 25 20:48 yaboot f TEXT/R*ch 0 1968 Feb 25 20:48 yaboot.conf
Andreas.