Ubuntu Dapper on an iMac G3?

This isn't much of any help, but...I had the same problems with Ubuntu (any kind of linux really) on my Yikes! G4, I think that there should be a mac OS on there, and that the drive should be split. I just haven't had the time to try it.

I'd got with OS X and Ubuntu, and just put X on a 3-4gb HDD, and leave the rest for ubuntu to partition.

John

That it really wants to have some flavor of Mac OS on it. There are plenty of dual boot apps -- like BootX -- out there, but one goofy thing is that in BootX's read me, the iMac is referred to as a "new world" machine, and as such using BootX on an iMac should be avoided.

That leads me to believe that I should be able to do something in OF to get it to boot into Ubuntu, but I sure can't find anything specific on how to make it work. The Ubuntu docs talk about yaboot as well, but...

I really suck at anything non-Mac!

Have you seached the forums over at http://ubuntuforums.org

Now the durned thing won't boot from a hard drive at all. I booted up from a 10.3 CD (it had 10.3 on it before I started goofing with Ubuntu), reformatted the hard drive and went through the OS 10.3 install process (twice), but still get the flashing folder-question mark/folder-mac icon.

Did I somehow hose the thing by trying to install Ubuntu? Not a huge loss, as I've got a couple of spare logic board assemblies sitting around, but still... That shouldn't happen.

i would suggest the usual, reset the pram, and the open firmware, and also hit the cuda switch.

Like a funky hard drive or a flaky cable, definitely check the cable!

Old Worlds and New Worlds alike can book w/o Mac OS on the hard drive. I'd give that thing a zeroing out with another box on a different cable, try the suggestions above and see how it goes after that.

-- Macinjosh

Old Worlds can boot with out MacOS, but that seems to require booting into either MacOS or Linux to accomplish. And you can't seem to get that first Linux boot without MacOS... I've yet to find a decent guide to booting Linux on Old World without a prior install of Linux or MacOS. A BSD like NetBSD can do it, but that *isn't* Linux.

True about finding a decent guide.. agreed totally.

I've gotten lucky... Tobias Netzel provided an ISO image to boot the Debian installer and afterward, a machine with it installed. Have a lookie here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10972

And what I'm referring to is: miboot_15JAN2006.iso and the corresponding release notes.

These are tailed for certain machines; definitely not a universal solution. But burn the ISO, and wham, you're bootable from a CD-ROM drive straight into the installer or into an install later on (with a little alteration here and there.)

Again, I'm not suggesting that this is for every Mac out there... but if someone were to alter this to suit their needed kernel, etc it might fit the bill. Perhaps scouring the 'Net further about miBoot too (not that I'm suggesting you haven't; just saying it narrows it down a little.)

-- Macinjosh

i recently tried both 10.4 and dapper on an old imac 333 that i had recently acquired(i can almost never leave a free computer on the curb), and neither would boot from the cd.

i tried quite a few things, and i know the drive isn't bad in it as it read my 9.0 cd and a number of others fine, and then had no problems with a drive cleaner cd.

i had basically the problem you're having, but with a CD. i would hold in c, and it would try as hard as it could to boot from the disc.. but no luck. defaulted back to the hard drive every time after lots of cd grinding. i would try the same discs on another machine, but it's the newest mac i own

Were those burned discs or factory made? Some older drives, like the trayloaders, won't read burned media well.

If you can't get it to boot from either an OS X or dapper disk, it's likely the drive mechanism that's at fault. Keep hunting; you're sure to find something to replace it, or ask around here to see if some kind soul would part with one for little to nothing.

I had this problem and after reading around I found for the computer to boot you have to have ALL OSes within the first 8 gb of the hard drive. I have OS X and Ubuntu dual-booting on an iMac G3 rev. a and all is well.

Worth noting is that the new "Standard Install" disc for Ubuntu in Dapper is actually a live CD which may not perform as well on some machines (especially those with less than ~ 192mb of RAM).

I would suggest you download the "Server" install disk, which can do regular desktop installs too, but which uses the traditional text mode installer.

I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 on 2 refurbished iBook G3 900 mhz. Hassle-free install, smooth operation. However: I can't find a driver for the modem card, and can't get Linux to notice the Airport card, which sort of isolates the machines... (This is going out on another computer.) Anybody have any luck with Ubuntu & wireless, or tinkered with external modems for Linux on PPC?

WiFi worked fine on my 600MHz iBook with the original AP card. The iBooks didn't get Extreme until the G4s, so yours should work. Is it not finding the card, or is it not setup for your wireless LAN? Try iwconfig -a and ifconfig -a from a terminal and let us know what it says. It might be a simple matter of the DHCP client not picking up an address. To fix that do sudo dhclient eth0 (or eth1 if that's where your AP card is found using the first two commands above).

Also, did you config the WiFi during the install, or did you put it off until later? If you didn't do it at install, it might not be set to automatically look for a connection on the WiFi until you config it through the System/Administration/Networking panel.

Sorry I'm slow to reply, I'm on the other side of the planet.

iwconfig -a reports "no such device" and ifconfig -a only tells me about eth0, loopback, and the generic tunnel device sit0. AP is also invisible in Device Manager and lspci.

Couldn't get it to work under 6.06 with out compiling a new kernel but running 6.10 the kernel recognized the 'USB Zoom model 2986'. It's not a software modem and works well on ttyACM0.

any one ever herd of quik bootloader
http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/quik/

it says its a open firmware bootloader for oldworld mac's and dont require you to have OS 9.x on it

would that mess up the beige G3 to not boot OS 9 or OS X would it make the Beige G3 not what it use to be.

what im saying would useing that hurt the machine in any way to make it not work with OS 9 or OS X tiger with xpostfacto. cause i dont want to try it if it make me not able to boot OS 9 or OS X or hurt the ability to run them.

A cuda reset will return OF to factory settings.

On the other tentacle, an open firmware booter for old world Macs will not work unless you have a good PRAM battery.

I was reading the top posts and I recently had the same problems trying to install Ubuntu on an eMac 700mhz G4 with 256mgs of ram.

The Jan 07 issue of Macaddict had a article on running Ubuntu on your Powerbook with step by steps. I went through each step on my eMac perfectly but when I put in the Ubuntu Live CD (factory) and held down the "c" key to boot the shipped Ubuntu CD, I got a different screen than what was mentioned in the magazine. It looked just like an openfirmware screen. It stated a host of options I could type to boot into various renditions of Ubuntu. None of which worked. They all produced the Ubuntu chime but the screen never changed from black. I could hear CD read noises but nothing. On the last try I let it go all night. Nothing, still a black screen.

By the way, in the article it mentioned about getting the Airport driver, so Ubuntu could make use of Airport cards: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=142727 with one exception: Get the driver directly from your Mac OS X partition rather than downloading it from the obsolete ghostcorp.net address listed. Than it goes on about what to enter in the place of the wget http://www.ghostcorp.net/AppleAirport2, and enter the following in its place: cp $OSXROOT/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirport2 .

Note that the command contains one blank space at the beginning, after cp, and one more right before the period at the end

Any ideas on why it is failing on the eMac?

I just got the Ubuntu CD. I had dowloaded Slackintosh but II couldn't get it to boot either and I even changed the speed of the burn on the CDROM sever times. I have the shipped version 6.06 and I can't get it to boot the cd either. I have Max OSX 10.00.2 hardley no app's so I wan to switch to Uantu so at least I'll have opensources apps.

Help me out here. How to get the thing to boot to CD?

Thanks--tnman

Hold down the 'c' key at the startup chime. Also, if it's an older tray loader it may have trouble reading burned CDs. Try using the ones that are made for Music CDs, as those should be able to be read in older CD drives too.

Though, I do have an older Compaq server that has a laptop style slim tray load CD drive, and it won't read burned media even if I use better discs and slow burns.

Hi again, you're right -- 'c' key at startup, and I didn't want to bother with all that partioning stuff, but thanks for mentioning the option. I chose to let the ubuntu installer erase the hard drive.

Seems there is growing interest in ubuntu linux.

I did do that....it didn't work. I get the black screen with open firmware style choices to boot. None of the Ubuntu variations work. At first it seems they will but it just keeps reading and loading and loading and loading....with nothing but a black screen.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234437