Thank you for providing that link - it worked.

Does OS X have a blessed open firmware boot script? Could it be modified to boot other OSes through yaboot?

Looking for OS X's boot file...

My powerbook setup started to have some issues I couldn't ignore so I'm reinstalling...

Has anyone here tried Ubuntu 12.04 on a powerbook? Has stability improved since 10.04 ?

Ubuntu 10.10 works quite good on Mac mini G4. I always prefer the version 10.10.

I think I tried 10.10 when I first got my powerbook. If I recall, it didn't fit on the cd... But anyway, I've since installed 12.04. It's got some weird graphics corruption issues (moreso than 10.04) at startup and shutdown but, once the desktop is loaded, it's fine. Except for Unity - which is what drove me from x86 Ubuntu to Mint... btw Aren't the x.10 Ubuntu releases somewhat experimental?

Instead of trying to figure out all the partitions needed for three OSes and setting them up with Disk Utility in OS X, this time I tried a more minimalistic approach. I still used Disk Utility, because the OS X install process seems much more likely to derail if the user dares to partition the drive with any other partitioning program, but only to create the OS X and MorphOS Boot partitions. I did this from the OS X install dvd so I had to quit the install in a fairly inelegant manner in order to install MorphOS first. I'm not sure what triggers it but I didn't want to wait through another OS X install only to find that double partition entry bug in the MorphOS installer again. With only two pre-existing, empty partitions, the MorphOS installer behaved as expected. Although it seemed somewhat difficult to convince MorphOS to change the Boot partition type to simple HFS... However, I was able to get Boot formatted correctly with a combination of Mounter, HDConfig and Format. With MorphOS installed, I picked up where I left off with the OS X install dvd - no problem there. I'd left most of the drive as free space so I then used some of that at the end of the drive for Ubuntu. The Ubuntu installer has three options - Whole drive, Side-by-side with OS X and Something else. Side-by-side may have worked but I went with Something else. Using the Ubuntu installer in this way, I was unable to set mount points for the bootstrap and swap partitions. I was still able to set the root mount point and somehow the installer managed to complete. Rather than mess around with yaboot, which is a cumbersome process, I just changed the Open Firmware boot-device back to MorphOS and use alt-boot for OS X or Ubuntu.

[ Edited by ausPPC 12.02.2013 - 07:07 ]

> Aren't the x.10 Ubuntu releases somewhat experimental?

I don't think so.

I prefer Ubuntu 10.10 because it's more useful than 12+ versions. Furthermore, Ubuntu gets installed on a Mac mini G4 more easily than other PPC Linux distributions such as Debian.

I noticed that both FreeBSD and Ubuntu PPC uses the almost the same size (~1MB) newworld block to boot from PowerPC and it's very easy to create and integrate this newworld boot block during installation (of Ubuntu or FreeBSD) But it's a bit tricky doing that in MorphOS

My ultimate aim is to install those 4 OSes: FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Mac OS X and MorphOS. So far I have managed to install 3 of them on one harddsk and they are selectable from Apple alt-boot menu. Now I'm trying to add MorphOS to the harddisk.

Mac OS X's Disk Utility turns out to be quite useful in adding and resizing partitions at the end of the harddisk. I also noticed that GParted in Ubuntu PPC doesn't work on the harddisk on which I installed 3 OS'es. It doesn't work on Ubuntu Live CD either, it might have something to do with having too many partitions on the harddisk.

ausPPC,
Quote:
You can consult the FreeBSD.org's forum member "sossego" (http://forums.freebsd.org/member.php?u=4804) on this issue. He/she's expert on PPC & Open Firmware, I have consulted him/her several times, too.

hi there, sorry for necro this pold thread, but...

... I really need your help installing Morphos next to an already existing debian 8.2 install.

Can you please write down the steps, I have to do, in order to not mess up my harddisk?
All documentions I´ve found thus far are 5-6 years old and refer to OSX-MOS dual boot or old version of MOS (I want install 3.9)

how to adapt your guide to my needs?


best regards

[ Editiert durch Elowan 21.01.2016 - 15:46 ]

If your boot drive is too precious to risk, clone it. Another option is to try moving your boot disk to a firewire enclosure and use a new internal boot drive for MorphOS as it doesn't boot from firewire - although OS X does & Linux might.

A third option would be to learn how to reinstall your OS and other programs so that you won't be stuck when your current boot drive eventually reaches the end of its life.

Unfortunatly, I got no spare disk for cloning...

I also got just one external HDD with a fw port and it already serves as a backup for another machine, so I can not use it. I learnd a good bit, how to setup my debian system and configure stuff.

And that´s the point! Even with that knowledge (or because of it?) I just do not want to go thru this, again ;) I made a totally custom debian (with i3 windowmanager, custom login-manager, screen-lock-script, custom conky, rofi menu, custom kernel, ranger filemanager with configured "extensions" and so on and so on...

[ Editiert durch Elowan 22.01.2016 - 08:26 ]

Just installed Lubuntu 16.04 and MorphOS on my powerbook, using parts of this guide and the dualboot guide.
Which proves that the guide still works with the most recent Lubuntu and MorphOS versions.

I have just one question. How can I set yaboot to boot into MorphOS as default after the timeout, instead of defaulting to linux?

Quote:

Check section "defaultos" of /etc/yaboot.conf and change to "defaultos=macos". ACHTUNG! You must run "ybin" command after changes in this file.

On my MM i have OSX by default. This is my conf for example:

## yaboot.conf generated by debian-installer
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ

boot="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-OCZ-AGILITY3_OCZ-9ZO26B7I94NQZ14M-part5"
device=/pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/@0
partition=7
root="UUID=51a4227f-75c5-4ec5-be57-fcd74bea98a8"
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot
defaultos=macosx
macosx="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-OCZ-AGILITY3_OCZ-9ZO26B7I94NQZ14M-part6"
macos="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-OCZ-AGILITY3_OCZ-9ZO26B7I94NQZ14M-part2"

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=linux
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet splash video=radeonfb:off video=offb:off radeon.modeset=1 radeon.agpmode=-1"

image=/boot/vmlinux.old
label=old
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img.old
append="video=ofonly"


[ Edited by clr666 29.10.2019 - 11:21 ]

Thank you, I'll try this later

My MacMini G4 1.5 is set up to dualboot with OSX/MorphOS. I havent been using OSX on it for a while, but today it hung at the apple startup screen for an half hour before I decided to turn it off. Now when trying to boot MacOS it just turns itself off shortly after the apple boot screen spinner shows.
Is there a way to fix this without reinstalling, like a safe boot option or perhaps something I can do with the MacOS drive from MorphOS?
I read that safe mode is entered by holding the shift key during startup, but then it will boot MorphOS, being set as default here.

Or maybe I just will use this problem as a chance to get more space for MorphOS, and format the Mac partition as a new work drive for MorphOS.
My system drive was getting quite full anyway.

Quote:

Well, just hold that shift key after you choose OSX in "apple early boot menu".

Quote:

I tried that also, but the same happens. It goes to the apple boot screen and turns off.
I also tried to reset nvram, and now it boots MacOS by default, but holding shift does not help.

In that case I think there's something terribly wrong with your OSX installation. I'd try to boot in "target mode", connect through FireWire as an external drive on other OSX machine and fix the partition using Disk Utility or other repairing tool. If you don't have any then I'm out of ideas.

P.S. Maybe there are some obscure Open Firmware boot commands that start the "safe mode" instantly?

I tried the MacOSX install disk, which does have a disk check and repair tool. It found some errors on the mac partition, but was unable to repair it.
After this I decided to get rid of MacOS and booted MorphOS, deleted the MacOS partition and created a sfs work partition instead.

Now it wont boot MorphOS anymore, so it looks like I messed up something. It's no disaster, since I was thinking about starting from scratch anyway when updating from 3.11 to 3.12.
But I do have a lot of stuff on that disk I want to preserve, so now I have to either manage to reconstruct a working disk layout manually without loosing my data, or copy everything to a usb-stick and let the MorphOS installer do all the setup.

I think there are two possible issues:

a) you just need to bless your boot partition again (the macos hfs drive is gone, bootinfo.txt must get changed and blessed)

b) you wiped out the boot partition (the small partition with hfs filesystem that carries the boot.img file)


-> a) bless the boot partition: https://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/HFSSetMacBoot

-> b) create a small hfs partition copy the according boot.img to it along with the bootinfo.txt files and bless it.

Quote:

Thanks. Its working now, it was the blessing I had forgot.

Hello,

I have now a macmini as replacement of my dead pegasos 2 g4. On it I used bootcreator and created a customed boot menu. I would like to have the same on mac. How to do it ? With or without yaboot ? In the passed I have tried to install debian on my powermac g4 mdd. All went fine to the yaboot step wich was skipped. For which reason I do not know. Is it easy or not to setup yaboot ? This boot menu will have entries only for morphos, no macos x or linux powerpc on it.

Brumiga

[ Edité par Brumiga 09.11.2019 - 13:52 ]

Quote:
But if you only run MorphOS on this machine what do you need a bootmenu for?

yaboot can be a bit tricky to setup. Most of the time you need to read the manpages of yaboot and yaboot.conf thouroughly to get it done.