Arch Linux

Kebertx

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 69

Arch PPC issue with creating bootstrap partition

On second thought, I'm doing good.

Last edited by Kebertx (2012-01-13 22:35:32)

Kebertx

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 69

Re: Arch PPC issue with creating bootstrap partition

On second thought, I'm doing good.
EDIT: Didn't want to be a help vampire. Something I recently learned about, and felt bad to identify as.
So, in case anyone is trying to install Arch on a PowerMac G4, and messed up around the mac-fdisk step, I stumbled upon a thing that you shouldn't do.
After you hit i to initialize the partition map
DON'T hit p too early to print the table. You're supposed to enter the full block size. Doing this causes fdisk to believe you are setting up a 4 block partition. The bootstrap partition has to be 64 blocks, so that will just be completely non-working.

A very simple foolhardy mistake. Forgive me forum, I did not see. That little letter p in the wrong line... nightmarish, now that I look back on it.
The Wiki will lead you well until you get to the kernel.

        #                    type name                  length   base
( size )  system
/dev/hda1     Apple_partition_map Apple                     63 @ 1
( 31.5k)  Partition map
/dev/hda2         Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap               1600 @ 64
(800.0k)  NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hda3         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root                31457280 @ 1664
( 15.0G)  Linux native
/dev/hda4         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                 3072000 @
31458944  (  1.5G)  Linux swap
/dev/hda5         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home               121770544 @
34530944  ( 58.1G)  Linux native

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

For the kernel the wiki is giving you something outdated. When you're installing the base, do this:

pacman -r /mnt -S base --ignore linux-pmac64 --ignore linux-pmac

And installing the kernel is like this:

pacman -r /mnt -S linux-pmac

pacman -r /mnt -S linux-pmac64

^If you are using x64.^

Am I a helpful community member now?

meph

Member

Registered: 2011-06-06

Posts: 160

Re: Arch PPC issue with creating bootstrap partition

Am I a helpful community member now?

The wiki article you linked is marked as outdated, so some sort of trouble can be expected. If you really want to help the community, then I'd advise updating the article itself. I'm sure that your notes are useful, but here they soon will be forgotten

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Running arch is like raising a puppy - if you spend a bit of time with it each day and do just a bit of training you'll end up with the most loyal partner you could want; if you lock it in a room and don't check on if for several days, it'll tear apart your stuff and poop everywhere.