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dirtyhippy
n00b
Joined: 14 Mar 2009
Posts: 2
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 Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:57 am Post subject: Trouble installing onto Powerbook G4 (No CD drive) |
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| As the topic says, I am trying to install Gentoo onto a Powerbook G4 without a working CD drive. First, I tried used dd to duplicate the a Gentoo install disk onto an external firewire HDD. The drive appeared in the boot menu (Holding Option at bootup) but would not boot from it. If I selected the external disk, the screen invert and the OS icons (OSX and Tux) would be garbled. I also tried putting the disk into another machine (macbook) and used target disk mode to read it on the powerbook. Again, attempting to boot from the disk would result in an inverted screen and corrupted OS icons. I should note that I can use this menu to successfully boot from the CD, but the CD drive poops out before anything useful can be done. Attempts to boot the drive from the open firmware prompt were not productive. Can anyone give me some direction on how this can be done? |
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vaxbrat
l33t
Joined: 05 Oct 2005
Posts: 731
Location: DC Burbs
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| Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:29 am Post subject: thumbdrive? |
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| Maybe stick the installer onto a bootable thumb usb? |
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mattst88
Developer
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 422
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| Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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You may be able to boot with SysRescCD on a thumb drive.
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dirtyhippy
n00b
Joined: 14 Mar 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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Perhaps I misunderstood your suggestions, or maybe I wasn't very clear in my post. I have tried booting the installer (which was copied from the install CD) from an external drive. The computer recognized this drive, but attempting to boot from the drive just failed. Do I need to "bless" some folder differently because it is a hard drive rather than the CD? If I was somehow able to boot from the recovery CD, would I not just use that same technique to boot from the install CD?
<edit> I followed the instructions in this post and was able to get a little farther. By using the command 'boot fw/node/sbp/disk:,//yaboot' it seemed like it started to boot (the screen turned to white text on a black background, rather than the reverse), but gave the message:
Can't open device <cd:0>
cd:-1,/boot/boot.msg: Unable to open file, Invalid device
...more yaboot info...
I think that I'll try just copying the files from the cd next instead of using dd. |
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Gentoo on PPC
