Fedora Core 4 (currently at Test 2 release) is the first version of Fedora Linux to include native support for the PowerPC architecture. I’ve just finished installing the PPC version on to an old G4 400 and the process was only slightly more complex than a standard x86 installation.
Points to note:
- Disk 1 is not blessed so you will need to create a boot disk from the appropriate image in the
[disk 1]/images/directory. Supported hardware types are mac, mac64 and pseries. - Once your system has booted it will eject the boot disk and ask for disk 1 to be inserted.
- The automatic partitioning process will create the bootstrap partition required by PPC hardware.
- You may receive a “Partition map missing” or similar message at the end of the installation. Click “Fix” to create the partition map.
- If your network interface was recognised but not configured during the installation process. you can fix it from the command line or by using the “Network” » “System Settings” » “Network” utility.
Update: With the final release of FC4, creating a boot disk is no longer necessary. You can now boot directly from disk 1.
July 5th, 2005 at 0:43
Hi,
Sorry to be disturbing but I am REALLY NEW at Linux and I am trying to install FC4 with no sucss.
It does not boot and I am pretty shure I have all BIOS op’s OK and also I am using the F8 key for boot op’s, but still it sees the cd but boot’s by hard drive with XP.
How can I make a boot disk?
Also I downloaded the iso’s from ftp://ftp.ip.pt/pub/fedora/4/i386/iso and burned the ISO images.
Can you help???!!!
July 16th, 2005 at 7:13
this doesn’t apply to you, sir. this is PPC (or PowerPC) processor stuff; you have an x86 processor.
July 31st, 2005 at 1:28
Hi there,
I’ve been trying to install Fedora PPC on a Powerbook G3 Bronze.
The installation seemingly goes well but when the installation is complet and the machine reboots I just get the Mac icon flashing alternatively with a question mark and it doesn’t boot.
Occassionally I get an “Open Firmware” command prompt but anything I’ve tried with that doesn’t seem to work.
I’ve let the installation automatically create the Apple bootstrap partition and also tried creating it myself, neither to any avail.
I’d love to get Fedora on this machine so what am I missing? Do I need to flash the Open Firmware or do something different on this version of Powerbook?
Many thanks for any help you can offer,
MikeD
July 31st, 2005 at 9:13
Hello, enjoyed your article, if you can help, I’d greatly appreciate it.
I tried to install FC4 on my primary Macintosh, and in the process, it told me it didn’t recognize the partition table of the hard drive. I clicked okay, and it repeated the same message, which I didn’t realize it was doing for my SECOND hard drive, a Mac volume, that had LOADS of data on it. Now a Mac install cannot see this volume, even though I didn’t proceed with formatting or effecting any partition table with the FC4 installer on this secondary data drive. In god’s name, please tell me there is a way to retrieve that data or restore a partition table without losing that data. Do you know anything about this?
Thanks for any help you can give,
Josh
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:35
Mike, I’ve had this problem (seemingly randomly) with FC4 on early model G4 towers and unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a solution.
If you can figure out what’s going wrong, I’d love to hear about it. My guess is that somehow the partition table and boot information isn’t be written correctly.
Josh, can OSX still see the physical drive if you look in Appliations -> Utilities - Disk Utility?
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:47
I’ve managed to installed Debian and also Ubuntu distros successfully.
These both seem to use the Yaboot boot loader.
If there’s a way to either get Fedora to install that or to install it before/after Fedora then it might be possible to get this working.
The X86 install seems to offer you the option to use another boot loader when configuring the partitions but this option seems to be amiss from the PPC release.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:02
Jimmy: Yes, I can see the physical drive in Disk Utility. I just can’t see any partitions underneath it. Similarly, every time I boot up, OSX tells me there is an unformatted volume and asks me if it should Initialize, Ignore, or Eject. Naturally, I’ve always hit ignore. I know the data should be intact because I haven’t touched it since running the installer! Its just the partition table has been cleared by the FC4 installer. Any ideas? I’m desperate–naturally, that drive had hours of iMovie video that I hadn’t burned to DVD yet. >:-O
Josh
August 2nd, 2005 at 13:35
Mike, Fedora should / does use Yaboot as well. When I’ve had the problems has been when it appears that the yaboot.conf file hasn’t be written correctly. I’ve spent hours making changes but haven’t had any success.
Josh, I’ve asked around a number of people where I work and they’ve suggested that trying DiskWarrior might be your best option. Unfortunately it’s expensive (US$80).
August 3rd, 2005 at 1:01
Jimmy: Unfortunately, DiskWarrior works its magic on disks with partition tables intact. I’m searching for the answer through a few more places. If I find an answer, I’ll pass it along your way. I’ve installed Fedora Core easily over a dozen times on x86, and this caught me off-guard, so I doubt I’m the only one who has done this. An answer should benefit some others.
August 5th, 2005 at 18:05
Okay, forgive the long post, but this is funny:
I installed FC4 on a first generation iMac. Everything went well as I installed the OS along with developer tools (I’m slowly getting into more programming). After a very long install, maybe two hours, the OS finally boots up. Great! Desktop appears - “Error: Progam Nautilus cannot start up.” Hmm… I’m sure I can iron this out. “Error - Other programs and maybe some system thingies that you don’t understand will now make your life hell.” Okay, not boding well, here.
Decided to restart the machine, and as soon as the sound card was initialised the built-in microphone went into full gain and internal speakers went into full volume. For those of you who don’t know, the iMac has no volume controls on the outside, only the OS can control it. Jam a sock into the mic to try and dull the banshee-like shriek. Reduce it to the sound of a megaphone being held in front of somebody walking on cats. Wait for five minutes in awkward keyboard/sock combo position…. OS freezes. Try again - restart machine, same thing happens, but OS doesn’t freeze. Desperately try and change volume in OS… “Registry Corrupt” message appears. I now hate Linux.
Go to re-install Fedora, find that ALL my disks fail the media check provided by the installer.
What am I doing wrong? I downloaded the .ISO’s via bit torrent and then again from http source just to make sure the files weren’t corrupt. I’m burning these using Nero 6 on Win XP by just opening the .iso’s from isnide Nero and burning straight away. Is there some special way to burn the discs? First time Linux user here! Help! Cheers!
August 7th, 2005 at 13:54
James, all I can say is that I’ve never seen or heard of the major problems you report. If the install completed without error, then the fact that your CDs failed the media check shouldn’t matter. Normally if the media are corrupt, the installation will fail rather than completing.
August 11th, 2005 at 22:15
Yeah, I thought that too. I was wondering, “Why is the installer programmed to ignore serious errors?”
I did a minimal install, i.e. just the basic core and command prompt, and there don’t seem to be any problems. Maybe it’s in the GUI? Which makes me think that I should install the other GUI on offer, not GNOME.
I’ll just keep trying. If I found out what’s wrong I’ll reply back.
August 25th, 2005 at 2:47
Thanks for the info. I just installed on a new Powerbook 12″ 1.5GHz and /proc/cpuinfo says 750MHz. I rebooted into OSX and made sure that powersaving was set to max performance and got the same result. Any idea why the proc is running at half speed?
September 1st, 2005 at 19:35
Thought I should post an update to my situation with installing Fedora Core 4 on an Powerbook G3 Bronze.
I managed to get it working… though I don’t rightly know how, heres what I did:
Booted from Fedora CD 1 and installed Personal Desktop configuration using defaults, formatting the disk and CDs 1-3
Rebooted switching to a bootable CD version of Linux so that I could alter the Yaboot config.
I was prompted with a Linux boot screen asking if I wanted to boot from CD or press enter to boot.
I pressed enter and Fedora booted fine.
I ejected the CD to ensure that Fedora was actually booting on it’s own and sure enough it was and still is.
It’s a bit slow and clunky compared to some other the other distros I’ve tried in the process of trying to get this working and semi-crashed once so far. I’m not sure if any of that was down to the speed of the hard drive.
Will most likely be being the fastest hard drive that this model will support over the weekend and giving that a try.
If any one has any pointers on where to find out what hard drives are likely to be supported please post here and I’ll take note.
Thanks all.
November 9th, 2005 at 15:55
Better, late than never, I’ve finally figured out how to fix this problem. Apparently there was a bug in the version of Parted shipping with FC4 which caused problems during installation.
I’ve installed from these updated images and it all works with no problems!
November 13th, 2005 at 3:03
Hi,
I am trying to install it on single board computer with u-boot as a bootloader. Since I dont have a support to boot through CD-ROM drive or through USB, I am left out with netboot option only. I was looking for netbootable/uboot bootable fedora installation image and then to follow the network based installation of fedora. But, I could not get anywhere the PXE bootable image for PPC or u-boot bootable fedora installation file. If you can point me that will help to reduce the search time.
Moreover I would like to wheather the following configuration will work with fedora ppc,
CPU - PPC7410
RAM - 512MB
PCI-Bridge - MPC107
Regards,
VAK
November 21st, 2005 at 9:22
Hi Vijay - I have used PXE booting with Intel-based machines but not with PPC so I’m afraid I can’t be much help to you.
For those who had problems with the original PPC version of FC4, try the updated images here. They have fixed a problem with GRUB that was the cause of most of the problems described above and now they work perfectly for me.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:35
I have a powerbook G4 867MHz. I downloaded Fedora Core 4 final release–I’m almost positive–but I cant get the computer to boot from the first disc. I’ve successfully installed yellow dog on my computer before. I dont know a whole lot about linux which is why I’m attempting to install it. And I’m a bit hazy on how do make a boot loader. Please help. Thank you.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:20
Ben, I would suggest downloading and installing Fedora Core 5 which is now out and has a lot better PPC architecture support. You don’t have to worry about manually installing a boot loader as Fedora will do it for you.