Re: Installing on PowerBook G4 - grub failure

On 24/09/2024 09:21, Steffen Grunewald wrote:

> Hi Efraim,
> 
> On Tue, 2024-09-24 at 10:25:56 +0300, Efraim Flashner wrote:
>> I know the powerbook and ibook are different machines, but I was able to
>> boot my ibook off a USB stick. I'll drop the link here in case it does
>> actually work for you.
>>
>> https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2023/10/msg00024.html
> 
> Tried that - the left USB port seems to be usb1, usb0 would be on the right
> side then, I guess.
> 
> (What may help to find the right device is the "dev / ls" command of OF,
> which will show the "disk@1" being attached to some "usb@1b,1" (I moved
> the stick to the right port) sub-structure of a "pci@f200000" bus, and
> the "devalias" command which shows that "usb0" belongs to that.)
> 
> But, even if I specify the right path, OF just hangs on the boot command.
> (If I choose the wrong "usbx" at least I get an error message.)
> Or am I just lacking some extra backslashes?
> Is this OF too old to do this job / to handle powerpc.elf?
> 
> 
> Got to re-read https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2012/08/msg00042.html
> next.

FWIW I did my last install on a G4 Mac Mini using a USB stick running Adrian's latest 
(at the time) image. I used dd to copy the netinst image to a USB stick, used 
"show-devs" to locate the USB drive, and then tweaked the cd alias to point to it:

   devalias cd /pci@f2000000 ....
   boot cd:,\\:tbxi   (I think?)

The gotcha for me was that the bootloader was hardcoded to use the cd alias which is 
why I had to temporarily change it rather than use the usb0/usb1 aliases.


ATB,

Mark.