****Help installing Fedora 8 on iMac G3

[Catherine Fitzgerald]

I was in text mode for the install. I will try burning the CD again and 
see how that goes. Thanks Craig.

Craig White wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-03-30 at 08:40 +1100, Catherine Fitzgerald wrote:
>   
>> I have been trying for a week to install Linux on my old mac: iMac G3, 
>> 500MHz, slot-loading CD, 20G HD. I am completely new to Linux and the 
>> only time I've ever used command prompts is on a PC, and a very long 
>> time ago, so if anyone is able to help me, please keep the instuctions 
>> as clear as possible. I appologise in advance for the long drawn-out 
>> detail below, but as I have no idea what the problem is I thought it 
>> better to give as much information as possible.
>>
>> The problems I have had are:
>>
>> 1- Innitially tried to install Kubuntu 6.04 using a live image burnt 
>> onto a CD using InfraRecorder (on a Windows XP 2000 pc). The live CD 
>> would go to a black screen after the initial boot dialog and then run down.
>>
>> 2- As that didn't work, and I was not worried about removing the old OS, 
>> I tried installing Kubuntu, erasing the old partitions. It would 
>> install, then freeze on the login and not accept any of my keyboards for 
>> input (either the mac keyboard, a pc keyboard or either of my wireless 
>> keyboards) so it was not possible to log in.  After several attempts at 
>> reinstalling Kubuntu and getting the same problem I decided to try 
>> installing Fedora.
>>
>> 3- To avoid downloading a large amount I downloaded 
>> fedora-8-ppc-rescuecd.iso from one of the recommended mirrors and burnt 
>> it to CD (using InfraRecorder on the pc). Initially the install process 
>> worked, and it requested a web address to download the images from. I 
>> chose the monash uni web site (html server) as it is relatively close, 
>> and the install proceeded up until I hit the 'yes' button for the final 
>> install process.
>>
>> 4- After hovering on the 'preparing to install' screen for over an hour 
>> I got this message:
>>
>> "The file a2ps-4.13b-69.fc8.ppc.rpm cannot be opened.  This is due to a 
>> missing file, a corrupt package or corrupt media. Please verify your 
>> installation source.
>>
>> If you exit, your system will be left in an inconsistent state that will 
>> likely require reconfiguration."
>>
>> with the option to reboot or retry. I hit retry and after another hour 
>> the same message came up again.
>>
>> 5- After rebooting the mac does not recongnise a bootable file (this was 
>> not a surprise). I put in the rescue cd, which boots without a problem, 
>> but requires me to know what to do (ie, use a command line and have a 
>> clue) to do anything.
>>
>> 6- I decided that it might work if I tried the live cd, so downloaded 
>> and burnt that. The live cd boots, goes through all the loading (mount 
>> dialogue? - with [ok] in green at the end of each line] then the 
>> computer goes to a black screen and the cd keeps buzzing away but doing 
>> nothing. I tried to restart the computer and typed in 'install' at the 
>> boot prompt, but get a message saying something along the lines of not 
>> recognised, or the iso can't be booted.
>>
>> 7- Which is where I am now. The HD has been reformatted (the old mac 
>> software does not recognise it - which is fine because I don't really 
>> want to go back to the old mac OS), but it has no installed OS that it 
>> can boot. Is this simply an issue of trying a different mirror to 
>> install the Fedora operating system, and if so, can you recommend one 
>> that has all the files intact? Or is the issue that when I burn the CDs 
>> it is being corrupted there? I can't download the DVD iso as the mac has 
>> no DVD player, and doing the install over the internet is not a problem 
>> for me if that is the only way I can do it.
>>
>> Any advice would be most appreciated.
>>     
> ----
> #1 - burn the CD at the slowest speed possible. When you burn a CD on a
> system with a high speed CD writer and then try to use that CD on an
> older, slower CD drive, you will have file errors.
>
> #2 - Your step 3 should have worked. Were you in GUI or text mode when
> going through the installation steps (anaconda)?
>
> Craig
>
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