CRUX PPC

Hello.

I'm a mid-level newbie with Linux as I've successfully installed mildly challenging distros such as Arch and Slackware on x86 machines before. However, this is my first experience with Linux on PPC.

I can successfully boot to the CD. After getting a Kernel Panic at first boot, I managed to figure out this bit of code to get me to the next step in the boot process:



Now it seems as though it's finding my CD ok, but it's giving me a Kernel Panic and telling me to try to pass an init value to the kernel. My question is: what should this init value be? I've tried searching this forum to very few results. Any help you could offer would be appreciated.

My system is a '99 Cobalt Blue iMac G3 with 128MB RAM, DVD-ROM drive, and a 14GB HDD. (Not too shabby for being 11 years old.)

Thank you,
Dan

hi,
first be sure your own machine has OpenFirmware already updated.

Apple G3 machines have only one bus shared between hdd and optical device and the cdrom/dvdrom is usually attached as slave thus /dev/hdb hence we suggest to boot CRUX PPC 2.6 (32bit) ISO with:


About the init problem... it's possible the kernel is unable to understand what kind of videocard is there. Your machine 'd be equipped with a Rage128 and you can also append:
or (last chance):

Very first iMac G3 models with ATI Rage (these old ones have instead a Mach64 core) must use:
or (last chance):

Wow, thank you very much for that abundance of useful information. I will try what you suggested as soon as I get home tonight.

Well, it looks like I won't be able to install it after all...unless these signs point to something different to you:

When I boot up my iMac, it does one of two things: it either plays the "Mac Sound" and hangs on a completely white screen, or it lets me press option+c and goes to the page where I normally choose between booting from the cd or the iMac drive. Neither of the drives ever show up, though, and I have to restart.

What does this mean to you? Anything? My gut reaction says the hard drive died or something to that effect, but I wouldn't think that would prevent me from booting from the cd.

Hello Acratus, and welcome.

It's not really clear to me whether the problems comes when kernel boots or before anything is ever loaded from CD.

In the first case, i think Acrux gave you a complete list of solutions to face a wide range of scenarios... be sure to load the kernel with

as far as the cd/dvd is attached as slave to the ide chanenl on iMacs G3... then append your options (afaik there is no need of extra options on iMac G3, i will test this tonight or tomorrow).

If it doesn't read anything from CD, there are chances that your OpenFirmware doesn't recognize the CD as bootable, or your hard disk is not partitioned correctly and it hangs there. The solution should be the same as described here:
http://www.cruxppc.org/FAQ#q10
Be sure to correctly write the string (yes it looks weird) in openfirmware. I sometimes experienced similar random problems due to cdrom drive pre-failure.

Please report what happens.

bye,