Hello!
This is the second post in my series about installing Gentoo Linux on a Mac Mini G4.
I started by following the PowerPC Handbook on Gentoo's wiki, which is pretty good.
It has a few problems, however. It tells you to use yaboot as your bootloader, instead of GRUB. This is strange because the livecd image they provide uses GRUB.
The (main) problem with yaboot is that it simply does not vibe with ext4. It will not boot. Instead, it gives a cryptic error and exits.
Of course, I did not know this while installing, and fell right into this trap. I was very worried that I would have to start all the way over (I had spent a few hours at this point), because I did not have a separate /boot partition. If I stayed with yaboot, I would have had to re-format my disk as something other than ext4 and start over.
This error will probably not be fixed, as yaboot is no longer maintained.
Thankfully, someone on a forum about this bug suggested using GRUB, and I'm glad they did. It works very well, and is also what I'm used to.
So, moral of the story, use GRUB, and the wiki should probably be changed, or at least edited.
Next post I'll describe kernel config and driver issues, and give a copy of my kernel config for anyone who tries this.
Top comments (1)
I love gentoo, yes isn't easy to install, but it's a good way to see more. I'm just installed again. Tip: try start with Ubuntu USB live, and make all partions.