HFS+

Installing ubuntu 10.10 on a partition on my G5 ppc

Asked by Giles Twigg

Hi there,
I am new to Linux and need some help to get installed.
I am putting Ubuntu on my apple mac G5 PPC OS 10.4.11 Tiger.
 I have an empty partition on one of my drives. When I have got to the install part where I have to select my partition for the install it asks me to select a file system (32FAT etc) Which one of the options should I choose?
Many thanks
Giles

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Chris
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Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#1

You should probably use the same file system as the Mac uses for compatibility - HFS plus. If you're not worried about compatibility then the default "standard" for linux is currently ext4. It seems that you may be able to access ext4 partitions from Mac OS, but only as ext2 read-only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system#Mac_OS_X
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=919400

Chris

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Giles Twigg (giles-twigg1) said : 		#2

Hi Chris,
Thanks I will try that.
I have been trying to read the install manual on the Ubuntu website and getting more info than I probably need.
Is there an order of partitions?
I have 2 1 terrabite drives and my mac OS on the first and 3 partitions on the second. I have taken all data off the 1st partition on the second drive to insatll Ubuntu.
I am trying to install Ubuntu 10.10 Maverik Meerkat
I got "the installation of the yaboot boot loader failed. Check /var/log/syslog or see virtual consol for the details"
Is this to do with the order of partitions?
I thought I had followed the install instructions exactly, but obviously not.
This is probably a very silly mistake. Can you help with the install proceedure.
Many thanks again.
Giles

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Best Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#3

Hi Giles, we're getting into the problem of "the blind leading the blind" here. I don't have a ppc and it seemed like the initial question was an obvious one :-)

There is no order of partitions. You can create and use them in whatever order suits you best.

Ubuntu 10.10 desktop release is supported only until April this year, so it may be a poor choice if you want to use it beyond that time. 10.04 LTS might be a better choice as it's supported until April 2013, and the next LTS release is 12.04 due out in April (and is supported until April 2017!) The decision to use a later well supported non-LTS release can sometimes be a better one if it provides hardware support that is lacking in the last LTS, however improved essential support does trickle back to the previous LTS release in the form of dot releases and updates generally. (eg the current LTS release is now at 10.04.4)

I doubt that the yaboot error would be to do with the order of partitions, however it might be something to do with which physical hard drive it is being installed to. If the computer BIOS is booting off the first hard drive while the Ubuntu boot partition is on the second physical hard drive, then of course yaboot would need to be on the first physical hard drive. An alternative is to use the bootloader already on the first hard drive to chain boot the bootloader on the second hard drive. I've never done this as it seems like an unnecessary complication but it may have it's advantages in this case.

To get in touch with other apple users out there and get some proper answers to these questions (especially about yaboot) you might like to try the apple users section of Ubuntu forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=328

There's probably people there who who will be able to help with your specific questions, or browsing the questions already asked may prove beneficial in any case.

Chris

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Giles Twigg (giles-twigg1) said : 		#4

Thanks Chris, that solved my question.