openSUSE 11.1 - Repositories?!

[losinghair]

Hi,

I was losing hair over the same problem. I think I have it solved.

There seems to be two things (or maybe just one) broken with the openSUSE 11.1 installation for PPC.

The first problem is that the graphic installation environment doesn't seem to work with the workaround. So when I boot from the DVD, I need to type "install textmode=1" for the boot option.

Next, during the startup process, you may notice that hald fails to run. So I let the install process set up and wait for me to tell it my language and keyboard. At that point, I switch into console with option-fn-F2. Type "hald" to manually get hald started.

Then, it's command-F1 to get back to the installer screen. Proceed as expected though through a tedious text mode installer, the repository on the DVD is found, openSUSE 11.1 installs as expected.

[Peter_Srp]

Thats solution does not work for me. Though from the installboot its clear... hald fails to load. Now i got a long weekend and will experiment with different points when or where to load hald.

[losinghair]

For my specific hardware (iBook G3 600), I had to boot the DVD with "install textmode=1". The graphic interface install fails consistently.

The license agreement screen is a nice pause waiting for user input, so that's where I press option-F2 (option-fn-F2) to get to console. I don't know if there's a difference between just typing "hald" to get hald started, or if "/etc/init.d/haldaemon start" is better.

So far, the installation works if the iBook is all by itself. If there is any device attached on the USB or FireWire port, the repository failed to be recognized. USB devices that make the installation fail include trackballs and keyboards.

[OldFerndalien]

> I've still got a lot to learn!

Yes, you do. This process failed a different way each of the four times I tried to go through it. No, I was not typing different things each time.

This isn't you, by the way, this is OpenSuSE's problem.

[eorusi]

Hello everybody.
I found a solution on my Powerbook G4.

At the very beginning of the installation screen,
in the BOOT shell, just type:


install brokenmodules=ieee1394


These are the modules for the cd/dvd driver,
and of course they didn't work as needed...

Hope this helps...

OpenSUSE rules!

[tungsten1um]

I have another solution, although it does require two macs. For whatever reason I couldn't get the target (a G4 Cube) to accept the DVD, so I simply put it in my laptop and restarted the laptop in FW Target mode (T at boot), and used the net-inst CD on the Cube. From there, I had the installer look for the CD, over firewire. In my case, it turned up under hard disks, as /dev/sda1 (You can tell, since no hard disk should have an ISO 9660 format)

Of course, had I found this thread earlier, I probably could've just used those ppc repositories, rather than burn a DVD and use this mad workaround. On the plus side, sound does work, based on the startup tone and an ogg file I dug up. I am using ALSA.

Installing this way even gave me a GUI installer, which was nice, if a bit slow. The whole install (~3.6GB) took about two hours. Of course, I had to manually configure lilo.conf afterwards (I kept os9), and now as per PPC Installation Issues - openSUSE , I need to fiddle with the OF to actually be able to boot OS9.

[Peter_Srp]

Originally Posted by eorusi

Hello everybody.
I found a solution on my Powerbook G4.

At the very beginning of the installation screen,
in the BOOT shell, just type:


install brokenmodules=ieee1394


These are the modules for the cd/dvd driver,
and of course they didn't work as needed...

Hope this helps...

OpenSUSE rules!

Where was my brain when I was reading that. Might have helped for you , but IEEE1394 is Firewire not cd/dvd driver afaik. So it was not working for sure. Is there a working image up for download meanwhile? Anyone knows? I don't want to download again, only to find out its the same still.

[bceverly]

Any solutions to this yet? Stuck on the install with a Powerbook G4 12" 1.5 Ghz.

[jarpis]

For what is worth I did find a workaround for repository problem, at least on Titanium PowerBook G4.

Quit the installation and move to shell. There you can mount the cdrom. I did mkdir /cdrom for mount point and mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom to mount installation cd there. Then go back to Install phase and choose hard disk installation. There give /cdrom as repository location. Now repository is found!

You need to have partition you won't be touching with installation or removed all partitions from all drives. Installation program is "smart" enough to look for real hard disk partitions and you can only choose from them. Above example works only when there isn't any partitions installer could get confused.

You could probably fake this by mounting usb disk and creating there a placeholder for cdrom. Or just copy contents of cdrom there. If you mount partition you will be installing to (and you need to have ext3 or other supported filesystem there) or you need to change partitioning, this approach will fail. You need to do installation in two stages, first for partitioning and then with the repository trick.

I got through the installation part, but installer refused to install bootloader which left me with unbootable system. I tried to follow this
<Booting on PowerMac - openSUSEc>
and this
<PPC Partitioning - openSUSE>
but to no avail. Even from inside working system (booted from cdrom with yaboot, no fun that), I could not get bootloader to install. For somereason suseboot could not get booting to working state and manual approaches failed.

And anyways X refused to recognize display settings properly, so I gave up and moved to Debian. Debian's partition manager knows how to make bootloader partition and it got display settings right on its own. Of course Airport does not work and you need mouse with right mouse button, but that's small. Installation took all of 15 minutes fiddling, opensuse consumed all day and failed.

Hopefully this is of some help. Best of luck.

[rm-star]

I had the same problem on my PowerMac G5 and solved it by disconnecting all external USB and Firewire devices (except for mouse and keyboard) before booting from the installation disk.

The target hard drive was mounted as /dev/sdf when installation failed and as /dev/sda when installation succeeded. Could this have an impact on the installer?

Regards,
rm *