loading second stage bootstrap iMac G5 (ppc64)

[Dante2048]

so close to finishing configuring Gentoo but I have hit a roadblock, i configured everything like the handbook said and when it comes to rebooting it just says "loading second stage bootstrap" with a flashing finder logo and a question mark.
I am 99% sure it's nothing about the kernel considering I used genkernel I am guessing its that i didn't configure the fstab correctly
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The Cell is a CPU used in the PS3 and it's made up of 1 processing element that's more or less a PowerPC 970 CPU and another 7 cores that are called synergistic processing elements

[exuberantmonkey]

If you followed the handbook, then presumably you used yaboot. I don't have an iMac G5, but I did recently install gentoo on two PowerMac G5 systems, and the handbook instructions do not work -- at least I could not get yaboot to work.

Search for the "GRUB on Open Firmware" page. Unfortunately you may need to reformat your drive unless you can snag some space for the extra boot partition required. You need the HFS NWBB partition for the first stage grub boot, and you need an ext2 formatted boot partition that will be the /boot directory for gentoo and host the second stage grub boot. And then fiddle with getting the firmware path or device alias right in your CHRP script on the HFS partition.

[MidnightCheese]

I also got stuck at loading second stage bootstrap during a current install that I'm fighting with on a PowerMac G5. In my case the solution was to replace the device alias "hd:" (that's mentioned in the handbook) with "sd1:". With the early model PowerMac G5 there are two hard drive bays (A and B). sd:0 is drive bay A while sd1: is drive bay B. (My drive happens to be in bay B.) The iMac is going to be different, but you could try sd0: and see what happens. Alternatively, boot into open firmware (command+option+o+f at boot) and type devalias to get the list of devices. Replace hd: with whatever shows up that looks like a SATA device.

I got past that, but now I'm stuck at the loading kernel stage. yaboot complains about unknown or corrupt filesystem. I've tried XFS and ext4, specified the fstype in yaboot.conf, but no luck. Other threads talk about downgrading to previous versions of yaboot, but those threads are 5+ years old at this point. May try the grub route as mentioned by exuberantmonkey.