Hi,

Yes, I even made a linux partition for SuSE 7.1 on the iMac, initialising the drive etc, hoping that the boot would occur on start.

Have you selected HFS boot partition (with fake System Folder) as startup disk? Does your os-chooser have type tbxi and creator chrp? If yes, please verify partition numbers specified in os-chooser. Also, try to remove os-chooser and set yaboot type tbxi and creator chrp in order to load yaboot without help of os-chooser.

I think that if someone had the firmware commands to allow a Linux only boot up, to begin just prior to my putting CD1 into iMac, then my problems would be over.

Hold down the command+alt+o+f keys on startup, this will drop you into OpenFirmware. then boot ultra0:your_HFS_boot_partition_number,\suseboot\yaboot

I may have used HFS+ in the last attempt - this could explain some of the failure.

It should be HFS!

Although I selected 2.4 kernel as the one to use in YAST.

Look in the /boot directory, then copy kernel image(s) into suseboot folder, and update your yaboot.conf accordingly. If you have selected 2.4 kernel in YaST it means that YaST will install 2.4 kernel, but it does not mean that YaST will update your yaboot.conf! Also, it may happen that Linux start, but cannot initialize video card properly. Ask someone who has the same iMac which kernel arguments may be required. PS. If you register your SuSE Linux, you will be eligible for free 60 days installation support. Why miss it? ******************************************************** * Best Regards --- Andrei Verovski * * e-mail --- andrei.verovski@bigfoot.com * * * * Personal Home Page * * http://homepage.mac.com/macgurutemple/ * * Mac, Linux, DTP, Development, IT WEB Site * ********************************************************