Yellow Dog - 2002 eMac Pt 2

Links: Open Firmware discussion

---

Round two of the Yellow Dog Linux installation into a vintage eMac. At this point, the variables had settled down to PPC idiosyncrasies around disk partitioning, boot loading, and firmware keystrokes. Several weeks earlier, in an earlier post, I thoroughly cleaned and inspected the eMac physically. This post is more about the installation. The overall order:
1. get yaboot (mac-ish lilo/grub) operational and boot a kernel
2. partition using mac-fdisk
3. make file systems on the linux specific areas
4. install core packages and modules (eg. network)
5. packages
So, pretty standard. The only reason for blogging this are idiosyncrasies.

yaboot
The first thing to consider was the "SuperDrive". Initially, I thought it was able to read DVD's, making an easier installation, but a second check on the specs showed it to only read and write CD's. Further, I had read on several sites that one couldn't boot from the drive unless jumpers were moved to make it the master drive. I was messing with CD drive jumper for quite a bit until I realized it would boot fine if I had the correct Open Firmware keystrokes. The two greatest of these were:
* holding "c" to boot from the CD. Holding down "c" during start-up directly loads yaboot from a CD. No jumper changes were necessary.
* apple+option+o+f for Open Firmware access. This is a much more analytic approach, since a person can stay in the Apple firmware and check settings and so forth before deciding to access their boot CD. When it's time for that, I used

boot cd:\\yaboot

Other commands allow a person to check the CD's files first

dir cd:\\

and there are others listed here.


disk partitioning
The problem here was making sure Linux could see the Mac partitions properly and that the hard drive was consistent with what the Mac expected to see at boot time. I hadn't bothered to read this and simply used my (previously) reliable cfdisk approach. Ineffective. Mac cannot boot without Mac-specific boot areas defined to its BIOS. One can use cfdisk to start that process, but cfdisk and fdisk can't reliably define all 4 or 5 partitions (Mac uses 9 partitions with its own OS!) in a Mac protocol. Even if you start with cfdisk, you'll need to finish it with mac-fdisk. I decided to learn how to do the entire process in mac-fdisk, just to limit the number of applications involved. That said, mac-fdisk has a learning curve.

mac-fdisk

continuing problems - Ubuntu
The Yellow Dog continued to fail installing. I then attempted Slackintosh, which also failed. I then attempted Ubuntu. It failed. The Ubuntu fail, however, was traceable to a specific problem. I logged a bug about it and waited for an updated daily build (Maverick version). The daily build was repaired, however, this time the daily build was too large for a CD! Since this older Mac only has a CD player, not a DVD player, I was limited to a USB install. This is extremely complex, before you know the tricks. One of those "easy when you know how", "difficult to find information to learn how" issues. A day of googling and trial and error was involved. I was irritable, I'd already put in a couple of days on various PPC CD-install attempts.

I had the oversized iso, but I had to put it on the USB. Should I leave it in the iso format or extract the files from the iso? Hard to tell from Googling. I decided to go with extracting the files. I had no app to extract the files from the iso. This meant I had to mount it. I went into the directory where I downloaded the iso, made a temporary folder there, and mounted the iso in there to get at the files.

$mkdir temp
$ sudo mount maverick-alternate-powerpc.iso temp -o loop
$ cp -r * /media/usb1/

I got a few errors about not being able to make symbolic links

cp: cannot create symbolic link `/media/usb1/dists/stable': Operation not permitted
cp: cannot create symbolic link `/media/usb1/dists/unstable': Operation not permitted
cp: cannot create symbolic link `/media/usb1/ubuntu': Operation not permitted

I made a note of their targets and went into the USB disk and (re)created the softlinks there manually:

$ cd /media/usb1/dists
$ ln- s maverick stable

(If you make a mistake, use unlink {link name} to delete the soft link, then remake it.) HOWEVER, I was thwarted yet again because the USB stick was formatted in FAT32, which does not allow for the creation of symlinks. So far, thwarted about 6 different ways on this install. Since Open Firmware will only read HFS, there is a Catch-22; how to copy files that need to be read by the Linux kernel on a USB that needs read by Linux.

Conclusion: It appears that the only f*cking way to do this Ubuntu install, since it's oversized for a CD, is to purchase a DVD player, burn the iso to a DVD, and go that route. Wow.

Yellow Dog - 2002 eMac Pt 1

Links: the eMac   eject the cd tray   eMac disassembly

---

A friend recently graced me with a CRT display 2002 eMac (apparently built 07/11/2002). The system would not boot as of late. These early eMacs are underpowered dinosaurs with 128MB of RAM, a 700 MHz processor, and so on, although they were the thing to have in 2002. To make it available for classroom use, a free OS, a keyboard, a mouse, and a GB of RAM seemed right, hopefully while remaining beneath $100.



some features
Model A1002 G4 700 MHZ Power PC
Firmware 4.x OS
Display 17" CD-R/W
128MB RAM 40GB HDD
NVIDIA graphics(32MB VRAM)
Upon disassembly, I learned I had also lucked into the prior owner's decision for a 512MB RAM upgrade, giving a total of ~641MB RAM. Taken with a 700MHz processor speed, watching video might or might not be possible.

Yellow Dog
To get it running, Yellow Dog linux looked like a natural choice. They've apparently released a PPC distro (in this case 6.1 dated 20081119) for some time. The originally installed software was Mac OSX 10.1.4, and it supposedly could handle up to 10.4.11. If any of these became available later, I could always blow-out the Yellow Dog.

For hardware upgrades, it looked like I could get a $50 keyboard, a $60 RAM upgrade to 1GB, upgrade the 2x speed "Super Drive" (optical drive) to a 32x DVD-RW, and put in a larger IDE HDD than the standard 60 GB, if I wanted. But a keyboard and mouse at least.

CD/DVD tray
In order to install Yellow Dog, I had to open the CD/DVD tray. The CD/DVD drive tray flap on the front of the shell would not open with the system powered-off. Powered-on, the system was not booting, so I could not use the keyboard eject. So, it was a Catch-22. Luckily, the shell needed to be removed anyway to clean 8 years of dust from the system.

I found, upon disassembly, that the flap opens from the top to the bottom, that is, the hinges are on the bottom of the flap covering the DVD drive. Unpowered, one can insert a small screwdriver at the top of the flap and pull the flap down. Additionally, the Airport card is behind a cover plate, behind that flap. To change the Airport card then, open the flap and remove the interior cover plate (two Phillips). Pulling the Airport card should be accomplished before the disassembly required for swapping the DVD drive or the HDD.

cleaning
Disassembly was no problem; essentially, a 2.5 mm hex and a good Phillips. I followed these instructions and would only add one clarification; The power switch cable needs to be disconnected from the chassis, not from the cover, this was left unstated in the guide. Needle nosed pliers were helpful to apply removal pulling pressure on the plug itself rather than pulling on the plug's (thin) wires. The plug is keyed for proper reinstallation. Disassembly voids the warranty, apparently, but that was no problem on a donated system.

Once apart, as expected, the insides were caked with dust. Dust is a large problem for enclosed cooling systems that rely on unfiltered air (think also "laptop"). I took an air hose to the uncovered chassis before proceeding further.

RAM/jumpers
As I got into the system, it appeared that a RAM upgrade had already taken place. It appeared to be a 512MB card, which would provide 756MB RAM, probably enough. At any rate, adding or deleting RAM involves nothing more than removing the bottom plate. The same for changing the jumper on the optical drive, albeit the angle is slightly difficult. I moved the jumper from the far left (slave) to the center jumper, hoping this was the right setting for "master". This is needed so I can boot off the DVD. We'll see if I got it right -- there was no jumper sticker.