HOWTO: Install Gentoo Using Nubus-Pmac Images (Kernel 2.4)
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NOTE: This article is a rough draft at the moment; it will be filled-out shortly.
[edit] Introduction
Nubus PowerPC Macintoshes have somewhat fallen by the way side when it comes to support in Linux; to date, the Nubus PowerMac Project is the only project that has attempted to address this shortcoming. Unfortunately, the project has custom kernel sources based off of kernel 2.4 (2.4.32 as of this writing), and only recently have attempted to port the patches to kernel 2.6. As a result, several distributions, except for Debian or Ubuntu, won't run on this kernel. As of 2005.0, Gentoo has also abandoned kernel 2.4, making kernel 2.6 the default and recently deprecating the kernel-sources-2.4 package.
This is sad, in a way, because many old Nubus PowerMacs are still powerful enough to use them for some purposes; for example, I am using a PowerBook 1400 with the 466 MHz Sonnet G3 upgrade as a web server. Debian/Ubuntu are very stable and are good enough for home users trying to run X11 and simple applications, but Gentoo would be a better choice for power users who do not want to be constrained by the package system. In addition, the fact that each Gentoo package can be optimized for the system hardware means that each package can take advantage of every last drop of performance these systems can offer.
This HOWTO will attempt to outline the method that I used to get Gentoo 2006.1 running on my PowerBook 1400.
[edit] Preparing Paritions
Newer macs can use Open Firmware (OF) in conjunction with boot loaders like BootX or Yaboot to boot straight into a Linux partition. Sadly, these methods are not available on Nubus PowerMacs because they lack OF and the ROM chips in these machines are pre-programmed to boot from HFS partitions only.
All is not lost, however; we will be using a boot loader called miBoot that we will install on an HFS partition so that it looks like a regular MacOS System Folder to the Apple ROM. Let's get started.
[edit] Backup Your Files
To install Linux, we are going to have to re-partition the hard drive to include 1 HFS partition, 1 swap partition, and 1 ext3 partition. This means that you will likely have to delete the existing partitions you already have. Therefore, if you have any important information stored on your hard drive, take this time to back it up to a diskette, external hard drive, CD-R, etc. The manner in which you do this depends heavily on how your system is currently configured, and is thus beyond the scope of this document.
