Bugzilla – Bug 1079435
cannot install on PowerMac G5 - yast requires a PReP partition on non-PReP compliant system
Last modified: 2021-04-07 09:41:24 UTC
Booting the installer required quite some fiddling - it seems to lock up the machine on kexec after downloading the new installer kernel more often than not. I found I cannot install with the new installer once running nonetheless. It requires a PReP partition but on a G5 the bootloader is written as a plain file on a HFS formatted Apple_HFS type partition.
Created attachment 758887 [details] yast log
It seems Apple hardware is not fully supported by yast and no partitioning proposal is provided. However, pdisk is provided in the installer environment so the disk can be partitioned by hand (or a pre-partitioned disk reused). To boot Apple hardware a HFS partition needs to be created on which the grub binary is stored. The partition type should be Apple_Bootstrap, the grub binary should be blessed and have type tbxi - details here: https://github.com/masterzorag/G5_ppc64-linux From that page it looks like parted supports Apple partition map as well. What does yast use for partitioning? Would it be possible to include Apple proposal?
The ISO used to create the logs in comment #1 seems to be a bit old. Esp. the ISO does not use storage-ng so the issue is not a regression of storage-ng. I would say that a feature request is required to support a so far not supported architecture. YaST uses parted to deal with partition tables.
It's the only ISO available here: http://powerpc.opensuse.org/ports/ppc/tumbleweed/iso/ Given it updates itself during boot it probably runs whatever is current code when it gets to the installer.
Michal, we don't have the bandwidth to support specifics of this ancient hardware. I've assigned it to the account for community bugs - if you or anyone can have a look and provide patches, we will consider it, but otherwise we cannot support G5 in the near future.
I attempted to install the current tumbleweed release (March 1st 2018 snapshot) on a PowerMac G5 7,3 (4gb ddr ram 970FX CPU and Radeon 9650 Gpu. The installer gets to grub, then Loads kernel, and ramdisk. While this is happening, the fans are starting to ramp up to 100% (probably windfarm driver issue) then powermac either blank screens after "starting udev... " or goes to "sending dhcp request to EnP2P.." and that fails, so a blue screen prompt shows up. As soon as I start to click the URL, the powermac shuts down. I have to believe that the shut down is caused by the HW fan controller panicking and stopping the system (After a five min period). I have no idea what the failed dchp request means. really I did get Opensuse 11.1 to install, but that is way old and has missing repos. It seems to not give the same fan issue and Yast starts without issue. This means that something you did in 2008 that's making the fan work properly, and starting yast properly is not present in the current install. I'd love if you could figure this out.
possibly the windfarm driver is not included in the installer?
Either that, or the windfarm driver is not loading for some reason
(In reply to Jiri Srain from comment #5) > Michal, we don't have the bandwidth to support specifics of this ancient > hardware. > > I've assigned it to the account for community bugs - if you or anyone can > have a look and provide patches, we will consider it, but otherwise we > cannot support G5 in the near future. Are there any community news on this? I tried the procedure documented over here: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Install_openSUSE_on_an_Apple_PPC_computer But it seems YaST/parted is not even able to read a Apple Partition Map anymore. That's quite a pity, because as we do have ppc64 builds from (open)SUSE, it would be great to test these on that hardware as well. This would be quite a great feature for the community, because this Apple hardware is very cheap nowadays, compared to IBM Power series. If anybody does have a hint on how to restore the ability of Yast/parted to read a Apple Partition Map, I'd be grateful. Thanks in advance.
What does it mean not able to read apple partition map? The kernel does support it. And while you can pull a G5 from trash if you are lucky it's a dead technology. The frequency of people commenting here attests to that. Also a G5 powermac is terrible hardware for debugging installator with its windfarm going full blast every time you reboot the machine.
(In reply to Michal Suchanek from comment #10) > What does it mean not able to read apple partition map? > > The kernel does support it. > > And while you can pull a G5 from trash if you are lucky it's a dead > technology. > > The frequency of people commenting here attests to that. > > Also a G5 powermac is terrible hardware for debugging installator with its > windfarm going full blast every time you reboot the machine. Thank you for your reply. Yast reports that parted is not able to read the partition map. So no partitions are displayed. The rest of your statements I absolutely understand. Thanks for responding nonetheless.
Today I ran into the same issue that Johannes ran into. I switched to console from the graphical installer and was able to create the partitions as suggested in https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Install_openSUSE_on_an_Apple_PPC_computer . They correctly appear when I execute 'cat /proc/partions' and even parted is able to correctly show them when I do 'parted /dev/sda'. But during the installation process the installer still prints the mentioned error (it says that parted is unable to read the partitions) and you cannot setup the required partition layout and mount points. Since parted is able to show the partition layout correctly, this may be an installer issue?
Hi, I am able to confirm the finding with my G5. I can say the OS will work on the system as I was able to use a live dvd to boot grub. However, it would be great to add additional support for apple powerpc64 with grub or yaboot.
Just to prove at least the OS will install as long as support is added for HFS apple system, please see my posts here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/opensuse-tumbleweed.2259488/post-29715150 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/opensuse-tumbleweed.2259488/post-29713251
I also managed to have a running system. I installed TW and saved the installed files to a backup drive. Restarted the installer and switched to console, downloaded and built the hfs tools with patches from fedora and thus was able to partition and create the hfs+ filesystems for the boot partitions. Copied yaboot from another ubuntu install (+ edited the files to match the system) and registered the new partition in the nvram. Copied back the saved TW files and now everything boots automatically and there are no issues with the running system.