G3 Blue And White And Suse Linux 10.1

Hello,

How are you all? Good I hope.
Well I have a G3 Blue & White. The old OS would not run and I did not have the originald discs. So I decided to burn a SUSE Linux 10.1 PPC ISO image onto 5 CDs and then install it.

Installing SUSE Linux 10.1 on this G3 has been problematic.

I am a newbie to Linux so I will try to explain some of the problems.

For one, after installations, the update process was unfamiliar to me. I understood that you you check dependancies before installing updates. So I selected all recommended pacakges, tested them and then installed them. This did not seem to change much until later the Gnome Desktop just would not load anymore. So I did a clean install again. It seemed to work the 2nd time, but after updating the system, several applets were not loading and I was prompted to either delete them or leave them.

I've tried doing a rescue install but it always prompts me for an install login. But when the password prompt appears, I cannot enter anything.

So I did another clean install. The applet issue came up again. So I thought maybe I'll try a different OS. Mayeb SUSE Linux 10.3 will work better than 10.1.

Only problem is 10.3 only comes in a DVD. I can't seem to get the G3 to install 10.3 from the external DVD. Does anyone know how to command the computer to boot from an external DVD?

I thought maybe deleting the entire old installation would force the MAC to boot from the DVD but In cannot even delete all the partitions. There is always an error.

Finally, I am trying to access my windows workgroup through the Mac. During install of 10.1 I set the domain to the workgroup of the windows domain but Linux does not recognize any of the devices on the windows network even if all the firewalls are off all the computers on the network and the Linux computer as well.

To sum up,

Is it safe to just select all the default updates recommended by linux if the dependencies are OK? If so, this is done by selecting all packages and accepting the updates right?

Secondly, how do you force a G3 to boot from an external DVD? I'm sure if you told me how to get into the BIOS I could change the settings. I've tried changing the installation source yet it will not recognize the DVD player even though I can access the files on the DVD through SUSE

Why would Linux throw up error messages when I try to delete the partitions while signed in as an administrator?

Why would Gnome become inoperable? And why do I always get these messages about applets failing t load delete or not?

Finally, why doesn't Linux recognize the devices on a windows network while all the firewalls are off and the right workgroup name is set?

Thanks for any help ahead of time.
Sorry if I am not specific enough. If you need more clarification I can provide it.

I had issues with this on a similar (teal G3) iMac using openSuSE 10.3 and 10.2- it's nice to see you got a lot further with 10.1, even if there are a few bugs to work out.

Selecting default updates is usually ok- YaST will check dependencies for you and let you know if there's anything else you need- and usually one more click will take care of it. Selecting all packages will include all available updates, not just the recommended ones. I find that there's usually a couple of automatic ones at the bottom that I don't need, like the nVidia video driver installer when I'm using an ATI card. Most of the recommended ones are a safe bet, though.

Forcing a G3 to boot from external source? I'm not sure how- I only know a few boot options, like holding "C" when turning on to boot from internal CD-ROM. Beyond that, I'm just about useless on a Mac. That's part of why I'm trying to learn how to set up SuSE on a G3 that was offered to me for free- so I can be marginally more useful in this area.

Deleting partitions is a tricky one- I wish I knew, because I'm having the same issue with my firefly drive. I loaded it up, but somehow it has become read-only, and now I can't clear space on it.

Wow- I'm not much help here. Is your CMOS battery having issues, or your hdd starting to make odd noises? That's about the only time I've seen a desktop fail without it being relatively obvious that you've done something specifically wrong (like wrong video drivers, resolution issues, or changed/moved a critical file and the OS can't find it anymore.) It could be as simple as applets trying to run on hardware that isn't capable of handling them.

Finally, the networking issue has to do with Samba settings and open ports. Just because there is no "active" firewall on the rest of the network, that doesn't necessarily mean you have the correct ports open on your machine. There are threads in the networking forum about this specific issue, along with several attempts to solve it. Key items: enable SSH in SuSE firewall settings, share the devices on the Windows side (you probably already have this part set up), and double-check Samba settings. Linux networking seems to be more art than science sometimes, but I would recommend posting about that part in the networking forum.

Hello again,

Well I've learned quite alot since this post.
Here is the story:

I got an old G3 that would not boot into the Mac OS. The discs were missing. So I just burnt an ISO of 10.1 and installed it.
The first problem I had with 10.1 was when various applets would not load properly making the desktop inaccessible. I figured this was due to some faulty updating practice of mine. Of course, I was experimenting quite a bit with the OS so maybe it was something else.
At any rate I finally got 10.1 working just fine on a G3. By reinstalling it and just being very careful about updates.
Later I realized I could not network with any of the other computers in my home network. I followed some online tutorials on configuring Samba but that never seemed to work out too well. The problem was that SWAT though working lacked some of the functions the tutorial claimed would be there! Strange.


Later I tried to update the entire distro but I realized it might be easier to just use a 10.3 disc. Unfortunately, 10.3 is only available on DVD and the G3 did not have a DVD drive. I tried installing it with an external DVD player but it wouldn't boot. Updating the whole system from within 10.1 is problematic too. I have to manually OK an endless list of conflicts. I think there are too many too ignore.

At some point along the way, I wanted to try the G3 with a MAC OS. I got ahold of a 9.2 ISO, and and a 10.3 Tiger ISO. But with SUSE on there, I could never get either of these OSs to boot and install. I could never get YAST to install either of the MAC OSs. In fact, even if I tried to install another Linux distro like Ubuntu or Yellowdog for example, I couldn't figure out how to get yast to even find the installation, and forcing a disc boot never worked (hold 'c' down for rev 2 G3 B&Ws).

So I figure might as wel get rid of Linux and start from scratch. But this never worked out completely. At first I just couldn't delete the Linux partitions from within Linux. But eventually I found a way to delete the entire drive in terminal as root. This worked out fine, but now I still cannot install either of the Mac os, nor can I even install the original IMAc restore software someone loaned me.
So I've tried plenty of approaches such as disconnecting the HD, zapping pram, resetting the motherboard. I think the HD maybe the real problem here so I went ahead and ordered a new HD.

Kind of surprising that the only OS that will work on this Mac is Linux! LOL.

Anyway in the future I foresee a dual boot SUSE/Mac OS X G3 with a 80 GB HD. Right now I'm about to see if my system reset procedure worked.

Well if anyone else in this forum has encountered any of the same issues as I have, I'd love to hear your reply.

Thanks.

hi copperlion,
Sorry I didn't see your reply right away. I got sidetracked from my G3 adventures.

Let me reply to your post. Yes updates worked out fine until I tried to update the whole system. Then I got a message saying that the updates were not compatible with the current system or something to that effect. After some tweaking, the system updates required manual intervention but there were so many conflicts that I decided it was not going to work.

I am still not positive why the gnome desktop applets got corrupted. I couldn't even repair it with a rescue boot. These corruptions prevented me from accessing the desktop and other places on the system.
Finally after a few clean installs I got it right. SUSE 10.1 works great on a Mac G3 B&W rev 2 with 8GB of memory and 512 mbs of RAM.

Holding 'C' down never did a thing for me! Before I knew it was a rev 2 G3 I tried holding 'D' down as well.
I've tried zapping pram 3 times in a row, booting into safe mode, and a host of other approaches.

Once I got SUSE working, I wanted to update to 10.3 but it is only available on DVD. I had an external DVD drive but I could never get it to boot SUSE 10.3 from DVD.

As time went on, I decided that I wanted a MAC OS on this G3 anyway because I have a client who wants to use some MAC-only online service for his website. So I figured this could be my cheap ticket to helping him out without paying 1000s for a MAC.

But I could not get any of the MAC OSs I burned to CD to boot from YAST.
So I tried to just get rid of Linux altogether hoping a blank disk would make these MAC OSs work. But they never did. Could be just bad discs but I'm using original IMAC software restore discs as well. I tried resetting the system after formatting the drive but no luck so far.
I'm pretty sure that 9.2 should work on this G3 for sure. Mac OS X 10.3 Tiger may or may not work from what I've read.

Most recently when I reboot the G3 I just get the openfirmware screen. I've tried resetting the system from here as well.
I tried disconnecting the Hard drive to force a CD install.
No luck yet.


Anyway if you want to format a Mac drive running linux here is the way--this is originally from http://ask.metafilter.com/58998/Reinstall-...nstalling-Linux

[quote]One thing you can try would be to wipe the drive from within Linux; this will erase EVERYTHING.

Boot up Linux, open a terminal, and type 'mount' by itself, and hit enter. You'll get a list of mounted partitions, which will tell you what your devices are. (I've never used Linux on a G4, so I'm not sure how the devices come out.) An example from an x86 box:

/dev/sda5 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)

You'll probably see a lot of lines, but you want the one that says "on /" in the middle. That's your root partition and is most likely your boot disk.

In my line above, the /dev/sda5 partition is mounted as /; that's the "5" partition on the "sda" device. sda is the whole disk; 5 is one of the partitions.

What you want to do is wipe out your equivalent of sda; it could be hda, or it could be something else. (I'd guess it's most likely to be hda.)

Once you know your target device, type:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512

and hit enter. Substitute your device for sda, of course.

Warning: this will destroy all data on the drive.

Let that run a minute or so, and then just do a hard power off on the machine; there's no point in trying to shut down, as you've just blown away the entire drive. The machine will crash very shortly anyway.

That should wipe out all partitioning information from the drive and should let you reformat it with the Mac utilities. I can't absolutely promise, because Mac G4 hardware is strange to me, but I'm pretty sure it'll work.

I had issues with this on a similar (teal G3) iMac using openSuSE 10.3 and 10.2- it's nice to see you got a lot further with 10.1, even if there are a few bugs to work out.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for the CMOS battery, well I actually took it out about 12 hours ago hoping this will reset the system. But if CMOS wasn't working then I couldn't access openfirmware right? Or at least I couldn't run any commands from open firmware which I have.

As for Samba, well I followed one tutorial which involved assigning static IP addresses to all the windows machines in the network. Then you're supposed to configure Samba with Swat, but Swat seemed to lack some of the functions listed in the tutorial so I'm still a bit hazy on that.

As it is, I know have a G3 with a wiped drive. When I try to install Mac OS 9.2 or Mac OS X 10.3 Tiger from discs I burned using an ISO image, there is not way to force the install. I merely get a folder with a blinking MAC face/question mark.

I'm waiting to get a new HD and see if that changes anything.

I found that Ubuntu running on another PC was much easier to network on a windows network than SUSE on a powermac.

Well thanks for giving it a whirl anyway. Jeez this was so long ago I wonder if you'll even know replied to your post?

Thanks for the response! I had to set my Mac aside for other projects, but I will try to get back to it soon.
As for the CMOS question, if the battery is low, the openfirmware may not run correctly, or it may lose bits here and there. Usually, the internal clock stops keeping correct time first, and other issues begin to crop up after a while.

I have it on good authority from some Mac gurus at work that these jellybeans can't run OS-X of any flavor. The hardware just isn't robust enough to do it. They're telling me that 9.2x is the highest it will go. It is entirely possible that KDE or Gnome were trying to run applets that the video hardware couldn't handle, or there may have been another part of the system that couldn't handle a piece of code properly.

I'll see what I can find, and even if it takes a month or two, I'll try to post my results here.

Thanks again!

It has been a while- a move and several headaches later. I finally got around to downloading the SuSE 10.1 "remastered" CD images, and burned them onto discs. I'm trying to get them to load and install Linux onto the G3 Mac, but it's just not working for me. It keeps hanging on the installer. I get a blinking cursor at the top-left of the screen, after telling it to install, and it never gets past that point.
I've had this issue with both 10.3 and 10.2 previously. I'm curious about any command-line operators/switches I can use when attempting an install, to see if that gets past the hang-point. I'm wondering if there's something it's misinterpreting or not finding.
Could it be attributes set on the drive? How can I wipe the drive and start fresh, so Linux is the only OS on the machine? Would the previously posted method for wiping the drive work for what I'm trying to do, or cause more problems than it fixes?
Looks like I've got some more research ahead of me before I get this thing running the way I want it to.

--edit

after looking around on the forums here, I tried installing using the following line at the prompt:

install video=ofonly textmode=1

Everything installed pretty straightforward after that. The system is running, but I don't have it connected to my home network. I haven't updated it or done anything too intensive to test it yet. It runs some basic stuff that my 2-year-old daughter might find interesting (potato guy and a few other things), but I'm not sure about much beyond that.
My daughter will have the opportunity to learn about computers at her own pace, and I won't have to worry as much about her doing anything to my system. We'll see how it goes.