Installing
Debian Linux on a
G4 Cube
Over the past 2 days I've dedicated my waking hours to making
Debian GNU/Linux on my shiny new
G4 Cube. Well, alright, the Cube isn't new, but the
80 gig Seagate ATA IV is. So, armed with a brand spanking new
80 gig Seagate ATA IV and a
cable modem, I set out to install a new system on my
G4 Cube.
This document assumes a little knowlege with
Debian.
YMMV
Step One: Partitioning
- Well, first and foremost, I assume you're keeping Mac OS around somewhere on hand. So, boot from your System CD. Find Drive Setup and use it to blow everything away.
- Set to 4 or 5 paritions.. My setup uses a 'big /' philosophy.
- Leave the first parition 'Unallocated' and make it as large as you want all of Linux's drives to be.
- After that, make a small Mac OS Standard Drive and then all your Mac OS Extended drives for Mac OS.
- Initialize at will.
- Install Mac OS 9.
- Reboot
- Go to http://debian-imac.sourceforge.net/ and download the sit. Uncompress it to your Mac OS Standard drive.
- Uncompress pdisk, it is a part of the debian-imac package. Run it.
This part is sort of tricky unless you're comftorable with basic
fdisk utilities.
'e' puts you into edit mode, try using /dev/hde for your drive's ID.
Once in edit mode, you have some options:
- 'p' prints the partition table. Make a note of the 'Unallocated' Mac OS drive you created before. It should be listed as Apple_Free.
- 'd' lets you delete drives. Wipe out the 'Unallocated' Mac OS partition.
- 'c' or 'C' creates Linux and other drives respectively.
'p'rint the
partition table, note the
partition number of the now empty space. Create a
bootstrap partition with the following:
C #p 800k boot Apple_Bootstrap
Where # is the
partition number of the free space. Next, your
swap:
c #p 256M
swap
Where # is the
partition number of the free space. Be careful, the # will be one greater than last time since you made a new parition.
Finally, make your
Linux '
/'
partition. This is most easily done by checking the
partition table and using the 'c' command interactively. The
partition starts at the base of the free space and extends for its length. 'w'rite the
partition table.
Before you
reboot, make a note of the
partition numbers of your
bootstrap partition, your '
/' partition, your
Mac OS Standard drive and the drive that
Mac OS is installed on.
Reboot.
Step Two: The Install
You're back in
Mac OS. You have a fancy new
partition table and now you have to
populate it.
- There is a folder in debian-imac called 'drag contents to disk icon'. Open it, drag everything out of it to your Mac OS Standard drive.
- Double check that drive contains the uncompressed debian-imac package.
-
Reboot.
Now, to the
Open Firmware. As you reboot, hold
Cmd-Opt-O-F. Release when prompted. Welcome to the Firmware. Type
boot hd:#,
yaboot
Where # is the partition number of your
Mac OS Standard drive. Type 'install' at the next prompt.
You should be whisked away to a
Debian installer. I hope you're fairly familiar with it!
The rescue image and base system can be found with the 'harddisk' option, located on the Mac OS Standard partition.
After hitting
Enter until your finger is
numb from it, the
Debian base system should be installed.
Do not let the installer reboot the computer
Hit Opt-F2 to get to a
shell.
Type
ofpath /dev/hda
then
mkofboot --boot /dev/hda$ -m /usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot --root /dev/hda# --partition #
where $ is the number of the boot
partition and # is the number of the '/'
partition.
You may now
reboot.
Step Three: Some last problems.
Hopefully you've rebooted to a sane state of computing. Complete the
Debian install first. I suggest using '
woody' for your
apt sources. Hooray for
broadband!
After you're done with your install, log in as root. Edit /etc/
yaboot.conf.
It is more or less straightforward, with the same paramaters as you used in 'mkofboot'. One note though, this line should be added to your kernel image section:
append="keyboard_sends_linux_keycodes=1"
Adding
macos=/dev/hda#
where # is the
partition with your
Mac OS System on it will allow you to boot back into
Mac OS.
Run '
ybin' to update the boot record.
Configuring X11
Time to tackle that monstrosity that we call
X11. The
debconf generated config file is almost good enough. Be sure you tell it that you wish to use the Framebuffer. A few things need to be added to the conf file that it generates.
Under the graphic card 'Device', change 'ati' to 'r128' and add
BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
DRI will not work unless you install a new kernel. I'm not going there, it's been covered.
I've never found a complete document of this type.. So I've created it. /msg me if I'm dead wrong please.