openSUSE 11.1 - Repositories?!

[ipcray]

For the record,

G5 Quad, no problem mounting and installing, won't boot after the install...


G4 Powerbook laptop, experiencing the issue talked about here exactly and no luck troubleshooting so far.

I guess this is going to be a move the ethernet bridge around the house deal and net install... O.o

It has to be OSuse though. Everything else ppc is ****.

[saltyp]

Gotta be a driver issue. The PPC mobo driver for your chipset is either not present or not working. If you can get your hands on an external DVD (USB) device i reckon the problem will go away. Does the PPC have a south bridge?? Apple...well marketed...well made...not real good (sorry, just my experience)

[ipcray]

Without looking at the laptop hardware info I can tell you that the RC1 ppc booted and installed fine on the G4. Never tried it on the G5 (oops). Assumed no problems and was waiting for the 11.1 release to do final installs.

I could go back and install that, then tediously update to next dist, or try an outside drive as you suggest but I would hope some OSuse folx would go in and fix the release installer at some point since it worked fine until the release (lol).

Either way, I will install this by hand before I use any other ppc distro. Fedora only other in the same ballpark, but just cant compare to the novell assisted osuse. Video, networking, etc. are just stone aged on everything but suse.

Rayz

[stream303]

Some thoughts: Are you burning the install image at a low-enough speed for the drive on the mac to handle? I typically burn at 2x or 4x speed just to make sure. This is easy to overlook when burning on another machine.

Is the mac-drive properly detecting your dvd media? Have you tried just simple DVD-R at a low speed?

That is one thing that bugs me about openSuse only offering DVD or Net-install. Sometimes the CD images are just recognized faster, and in fact Fedora 10 now provides cd install images for ppc. C'mon openSuse - cd images are really convenient for us ppc'ers.

Netinstalls aren't that bad really when you consider that if you were to install from a DVD, it is likely that you'd want to upgrade/install more software from the latest repos anyway, and not from the initial release material.

Once you get past the point of openSUSE correctly detecting your cd/dvd, have you tried the repos at:

powerpc.opensuse.org

with a directory structure of

/distribution/11.1/repo/oss/

or perhaps just tell it to use it all on just one line:

http://powerpc.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/repo/oss/

[ipcray]

Thanks for the suggestions, been busy with holidays. Gonna tinker around this weekend a bit and post whatever solution i find is easiest. (I may work a couple just for ***** and giggles)

The thrill of victory or agony of defeat will be posted after I give it a go.

As far as the DVD media goes, the speed thing is something I have heard before somewhere and I will definitely test that with 1 more disk, although I still think it unlikely to be the culprit since the RC1 installed on G4, and release installed (but did not boot) on G5.

Either way, compared to 5 years ago ppc linux this is cake.

Results incoming soon...

[ehwood]

I just tried using a DVD+R burned at 4X to install onto an iBook G4, and had the same repo problem with the DVD. The tip to use powerpc.opensuse.org does seem to be helping.

[XTrez]

This is a real shame. Suse Linux is my fav linux, installation issues like this can be a real shame to the success of this great distro. Im having the same issue as everyone trying to install OpenSuse 11.1 on a G4 powerbook. The lest reliant on the interent the greater success you will have for novice people installing SUSE linux. Any have a solution to this stupid issue?? I mean, wouldnt issues like this be resolved before they relese it past beta or even R1??? Who the hell is testing this software??? OpenSUSE 11 was downloaded and install with a similar issue related to partiting, this was fixed only because I had to format the drive using a Apple disk to FAT32 then install suse again, what a waist of time, all the work and extra hard work on the hardware for something that could have been fixed in the first place. With the new partition tool in 11.1 I was hoping this was fixed and what ever I was doing wrong could have been fixed and Id get my Mac SUSE-ing, but looks like I dont even get that far this time. shame, but hoping to see a solution this time and forever solved, even a colur boot screen would be nice???

[stream303]

I can share your frustration, but PPC on the Apple relies heavily upon end-user testing and community support no matter what distro you choose.

PPC on the Apple can be finicky at times - it just wasn't designed at the outset to run anything but OSX. The guys in Cupertino aren't exactly handing out the docs to the hardware.

One thing that may help newcomers not familiar with ppc partitioning on the Apple is to be willing to wipe out the whole disk, provided you have OSX backups if that is important. Apple needs special partitioning beyond what is needed in X86 installation, so when it comes time to partition, I tell OpenSuse to "use the whole disk" by telling it to create a new partition setup - that is where one can see the option to "use the whole disk", and the special apple partitioning will be taken care of for you. (Apple needs a minimum of 4 partitions - special hfs, boot, root, and swap). Unless you know how to do this yourself, just let the partitioner do it.

Consider ourselves lucky that with OpenSuse ppc, they provide a fully populated /etc/X11/xorg.conf file - most other recent distros with the newer X server have next to nothing or the file is even empty! Depending on the model, one may have to go and manually edit xorg.conf themselves because the installers just can't get the right probing information back from the video cards - it's just the way that the Apple hardware is made, and not really a fault of the installer.

At any rate, I hope the repo information here helps, and once past that, try the "use the whole disk" option when partioning - although this will blow out everything on the disk obviously, so be sure to have backups.

Doing a ppc install can sometimes really test one's patience, so just clear some space and time and be ready to walk away for a few hours - or days depending.

[timcapelle]

I'm having the same exact problem as the original poster. I have an ibook g4 1.2ghz. It looks as if all the drivers loaded fine. Even my sierra aircard 595u for mobile broadband was recognized and had drivers for. but then it can't locate the repo on the DVD drive. What am I supposed to input when it prompts me?

This issue should have been addressed by now. Some help would be greatly appreciated, I'd love to install suse!


BTW i can access a terminal by pressin fn+ctrl+option+f2 on my mac

thanks a lot!
tim

[wanger123]

+1 - same here! G4 PowerBook 1 GHz. I definitely think it's a driver prob with the DVD drive.