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bd129

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Dec 31, 2019
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I've been poking around on Void, and saw some RPMs pop up in search results. It looks like OpenSUSE runs builds of Tumbleweed and packages for both big and little PPC64. Has anyone given it a go?
 
This is my second experiment, now I've got working SAS & 4 drives attached (see my other thread :) ). Right now, I can say that grahical Yast advices quite strange setup for PowerPC mac - it defaults to GPT partitioned disk with btrfs & other things. I wonder how this combination have to be booted...
 
Found these posts. Looks like you need to change the partitions before/during install. One guy used ubuntu's installer to create the partitions.

Cheers
 
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See this post
I'd be curious if he can get it installed, as i don't know of anyone using opensuse on a powermac g5.
Ah heck, must have missed that thread. It'll certainly be interesting to watch along - I'd have a crack myself if I wasn't busy.

I wonder if GRUB from Void would be able to detect an OpenSUSE install, and boot with that?
 
Reporting from attick :D. As for the moment, Yast (started with textmode=1 boot parameter) doesn't allow to create Apple Partition Map on drive. This type of partitioning is just non-existent in expert mode partition program. Drive itself is already partitioned with APM from another VT with pdisk, but Yast thinks, now partition table exist. Here I'tm a bit stuck. May be there is another way to convince Yast? Or try to create GPT table & install it in such way? This have to proved really hard times in booting system, I think. (Somebody knws, may be there is more old installation ISO, where APM supported?)
 
Reporting. Installation considered as failure. main trouble is that yast2 doesn't suppport APM for disk now. With GPT it installed packages, but required (as I suppose) for mac Apple Bootstrap partition can not be created & there now way to format any partition with HFS.
So, anyone knows, where we can get most recent OpenSUSE installer ISO, which still support powermac's specifics (APM , bootstrap partition, hfs, m.b. something else)? I personally didn't found such files.
 
Ok. My conclusion: we need working network mirror for installation (got 13.2 DVD, but it;s not recognized by installer, may be because it is FireWire-connected drive). If someone here knows, how to install OpenSUSE on powermac - please drop a line here.
 
I’ll try to follow this when I have free time. Maybe give it a shot.
I use OpenSUSE on PCs as my main substitute when I can’t run OS X.


Reporting from attick :D. As for the moment, Yast (started with textmode=1 boot parameter) doesn't allow to create Apple Partition Map on drive. This type of partitioning is just non-existent in expert mode partition program. Drive itself is already partitioned with APM from another VT with pdisk, but Yast thinks, now partition table exist. Here I'tm a bit stuck. May be there is another way to convince Yast? Or try to create GPT table & install it in such way? This have to proved really hard times in booting system, I think. (Somebody knws, may be there is more old installation ISO, where APM supported?)
Reporting. Installation considered as failure. main trouble is that yast2 doesn't suppport APM for disk now. With GPT it installed packages, but required (as I suppose) for mac Apple Bootstrap partition can not be created & there now way to format any partition with HFS.
So, anyone knows, where we can get most recent OpenSUSE installer ISO, which still support powermac's specifics (APM , bootstrap partition, hfs, m.b. something else)? I personally didn't found such files.
What G5 are you using? Late 2005 G5s actually support booting from GPT.
 
What G5 are you using? Late 2005 G5s actually support booting from GPT.

PowerMac G5 QUAD. (8GB RAM, Sas LSI3041e-r, 4 SAS drives, look my other thread). Even it can boot to GPT disk, OpenSUSE installer can't create Apple_bootstrap partition & can't format it to HFS. When I've tried to create partitions, there wa no such option as HFS in YAST. Does powermac requires same partitions set for GPT as it uses for APM? (Bootstrap/boot/root)?
 
PowerMac G5 QUAD. (8GB RAM, Sas LSI3041e-r, 4 SAS drives, look my other thread). Even it can boot to GPT disk, OpenSUSE installer can't create Apple_bootstrap partition & can't format it to HFS. When I've tried to create partitions, there wa no such option as HFS in YAST. Does powermac requires same partitions set for GPT as it uses for APM? (Bootstrap/boot/root)?
Well, it looks like Apple_bootstrap specifically exists for yaboot, and needs to be HFS, so I can't imagine that's any different using GPT. If you were using GRUB, that would be using Apple_Boot, which would also have to be HFS, but given GRUB on PPC Mac is actually a fairly new thing, there's less documentation that I can find about it. But either way, HFS is the running theme.

New question, is this a live disk? Does it have a seperate partition manager? Because if YAST can't do it, that doesn't mean nothing can. For example, I've used Parted to do this with no trouble. And that doesn't mean YAST can't write to it if it already exists. After all, Linux has no trouble writing to HFS. That's likely why it's used.
 
OpenSUSE disk isn't live (at least that images, which I've downloaded), they are just installers (even DVD version). The problem with GPT type is that we need somehow to create Apple bootstrap or equal partition, which requires own partition type\code (I don't know it as for now :D ). It's quite obvious, that partitioning can be made from some other Linux distro. The problem is to convince Yast to work with resulting setup (I've didn't finished that, because it was too late & I was nearly falling from chair :D ).

(Btw, Debian, installed to SAS drive, couldn't install yaboot & grub, because ofpath to controller & drive was "unsupported" :D ).
 
So, the battle continues. Installed SUBJ to SAS drive (it's numbered as disk@5 in OF console, GPT partitioning). (BTW, is there any way, how to check patition style in OF console, really? :) ) But, as expected, there are now boot loader, nothing, what OF can read. Only first partition, which I made as HFS, named Apple_boot, partition type 50 in gpt fdisk. attaching picture. Obviously, drive@8:3 is macOS Leo. So, is there any way to install some boot loader to partition, visible to OF & try to boot from there? (GRUB installed in Gentoo detected OpenSUSE, but it's unbootable, as it can't find partition by UUID in config). (For God's sake, anybody, pls correct my spelling, I feel it IS awful :D ).
 

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@Tratkazir_the_1st You can make a Debian install disc or USB stick, and enter into its built-in rescue mode to chroot into OpenSUSE's filesystem. If a spare partition is available in at least 1 MB of size, you can then use yabootconfig -b /dev/sda(x) to install a rudimentary bootloader into said partition, depending on its hierarchical position in the partition map.

That said, I don't have any experience with OpenSUSE and have no idea if this will work, but perhaps it is worth a shot at least as far as bootloaders go.

(For God's sake, anybody, please correct my spelling, I feel it IS awful :D ).

So, the battle continues. I have installed SUBJ to a SAS drive (It's identified as disk@5 in OF, with GPT partitioning. - BTW, is there any way to check the partition map within OF? :) ). But, as expected, there is no boot loader that OF can read. Only the first partition which I formatted as HFS, and labeled "Apple_boot", with partition type 50 in the GPT fdisk tool. I am attaching a picture.

Obviously, disk@8:3 is macOS Leopard. So, is there any way to install some boot loader to a partition visible to OF & try to boot from there? (GRUB installed from Gentoo detected the OpenSUSE installation, but it's unbootable, as it can't find the partition's UUID.)

I have corrected your spelling, punctuation, sentence structuring, and terminology where applicable while preserving its (perhaps questionable) grammar or flow to the best of my ability.

Taking several presumptive liberties here, there is generally no strict standard of conversational speech to closely adhere to while writing in the English language (or any other language, sans programming), as everyone has their own subtly distinct style of tone, sentence structuring, and vocabulary, much like while talking in real life (or rather, physical reality - it can be argued with great plausibility that "real life" is now a functional secondary to the Internet, contrary to 10 or 15 years ago, making one question which of them the actual "real life" is).

The point of course is that everyone has their own slightly different standard of communication that is effectively their own personal spin on the subject language, provided that they can indeed read and write in said base language.

Going further ... this established point can be interpreted as relevant to the original subject matter of questionable writing in a variety of ways, depending on the individual's perspective and scenario context...
 
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Someone on Twitter also installed Tumbleweed successfully on a G5:

" Boot to the Ubuntu 16.04 and from there you can mount the 2nd Tumbleweed and chroot to the environment (similar to what Gentoo PPC64 is doing https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:pPC64/Installation/Base It will work really well (and you can even run remote X11 this way) - so who said OpenSUSE PPC64 won't work? "

Wrong way. Main idea: autonomous installation with own boot loader.
 
I managed to install opensuse tumbleweed on my g5 with lxde desktop environment. At the moment, I am booting with a live CD from a different distro. I need to fix the partitions in order to either use grub, which I know is difficult, or install Yaboot. Any recommendations?
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1. Download the PPC 64 version of tumbleweed and burn to DVD
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/ppc/tumbleweed/iso/
2. My video card that some issues with some of the desktop environments, and on top of that installation doesn't seem to go well if I do any of the suggested desktop environments within the installer. That said, I specifically choose server mode with no desktop.
3. When yo go to format the paritions make sure the OS is ext4
4.Let the install finish.. I did select the third party repositories
4. Boot a live CD like Adélie
https://www.adelielinux.org/download/
5. Boot up to the live CD
7. select c to get grub menu.
8.. Enter ls make sure you see the entry in the next step.
9. Enter the following:

You can tab both Linux, Initrid, and the /boot directory for autocomplete. Also, make sure you use the guided partition during the install and when formatting the ssd. Otherwise, the below might not match. In that case, you will need to make sure you know the partitions or just guess. When you are in grub - type "ls" and try each ieee1275/hd,gpt<1-x> until you find the boot partition.

root=(ieee1275/hd,gpt2)
Linux /boot/<VMlinux kernel> root=/dev/sda2
Initrid /boot/<initrid>
boot

Some of the of the above is dependent on your configuration.
 
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