Easy install pack for beige mac owners

[Robert Persson]

You can transform the lives of poor forgotten oldworld mac owners
at the cost of a measly 10MB or so of server space.

I know that Ubuntu isn't supported on Oldworld macs, but the fact
is it seems to work, at least on my PM8600, which is unusual for
linux distros, usually because the kernels are imcompatible with
the architecture.

Unfortunately to put Ubuntu onto an oldworld mac at the moment it
is necessary to use a convoluted process involving 2 installs.
This is because you have to create a small fat32 partition to be
mounted as /boot during the first install. This installation
will fail, but if you now boot into macos you will be able to
copy the initrd and kernel from the fat32 partition to your hfs/
hfs+ one so that, once the second (successful) installation has
completed you can boot into it using bootx or miboot.

If you were to post an archive on your website called oldworld.
sit, which would contain the net and/or cd install kernel and
initrd, as well as the 2.6.8.1 kernel and initrd and a copy of
bootx/miboot, then that would be immensely useful to oldworld mac
users like me who cannot currently install an up-to-date linux
distro.

Of course this wouldn't guarantee that all the hardware would
work properly - scsi scanner, serial printer, usb card (none of
which seem to work in YDL3) - but it would be a start.

If you don't have time then I could put one together for you.
Nothing fancy, mind. Just the 5 files along with a README
containing some simple instructions and some web addresses to go
to if you get stuck.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

We're unlikely to do it quite that way, because it won't scale to our
development processes; the right answer is to make debian-installer spit out
floppy images suitable for OldWorld, and that involves some changes to the
initrd. That way we can support the architecture *properly*. Once OldWorld
installs are working with some degree of reliability in Debian - they're still a
difficult and poorly-documented process - we'll do that.

In the meantime, cross-installing using the instructions at
http://archive.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/dists/warty/main/installer-powerpc/current/doc/manual/en/apcs03.html
(with quik/BootX/miBoot rather than yaboot) is probably your best bet.

[Carthik Sharma (carthik)]

Changing status to confirmed since the issue has been acknowledged. Colin effectively rejected this bug, suggesting an alternative. Marking this bug confirmed.

Maybe this bug can be closed?

Thank you for reporting this.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Please do not close this bug unless and until Ubuntu supports OldWorld PowerMacs.

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

I know that Colin suggested that this bug stays open, but that was in 2004 when PPC was more widely used and supported. Since it will also become ever less likely to be implemented, isn't it perhaps time to close this bug?