A puzzle: getting Fedora PPC on to an iBook G4

[David Woodhouse]

On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 22:49 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> I have a late 2003 iBook G4.  It's one of the ones that had the
> display fault which Apple wouldn't admit to[1].
> 
> The upshot of this is: the internal LCD does not work.  Being an
> iBook, it also doesn't have a serial port.  However it does have wired
> network, an external display and several USB ports.
> 
> Currently it is running Mac OS X, using the external display.
> 
> Here's a puzzle for you: how do I get Fedora PPC on this machine?
> 
> There is no visible way to get to the OpenFirmware boot prompt.  (I
> mean, I can get to it, but I have to type blind, and I don't see any
> messages).
> 
> It does seem to boot into the Fedora PPC CD disk 1, judging by the
> noises it makes.  Of course it's not very much use because it won't
> use the external display, so I can't see anything.

So use VNC.

If you give the installer enough information on the kernel command line,
you don't need to interact with it at all -- it'll go straight into a
VNC install and the first thing you have to do is connect to its VNC
server. It's been a while since I've done a totally headless install,
but ISTR the things you need to provide are:
	- Language
	- Keyboard
	- Repository URL
	- IP information

It may be that switching to NetworkManager in the installer has broken
this capability. Try it on a machine that _isn't_ headless until you can
get from the bootloader prompt into VNC without having to touch it. It
doesn't have to be a PPC machine.

Kickstart is another alternative, perhaps.

> I have not been able to get it to netboot.  It sends packets to my
> dnsmasq-based PXE server, and dnsmasq sends packets back, but nothing
> further happens.  (This dnsmasq configuration can boot PC guests
> fine).
> 
> Is there something I can type blind at the CD prompt?  (And what?)
> 
> Is there another boot method?
> 
> Serial-over-ethernet?
> 
> USB serial ports?  (I don't have one, but I could get one if you think
> they would work).

You can telnet into OpenFirmware -- some versions of it, at least. Try
something like:
	" enet:telnet,10.0.0.1" io

http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_boot.html

If you can't telnet into OF, you could still make an installer boot.iso
with the appropriate kernel command line (to get it straight to VNC)
hardcoded into its yaboot.conf.

-- 
David Woodhouse                            Open Source Technology Centre
David.Woodhouse at intel.com                              Intel Corporation