Triple Booting my iBook Clamshell (466 mhz, 576 MB)

Hello all!

First off while this is my first post in this forum, I am not new to Macs. Since I was 7 years old(A Macintosh II was my first), I have used them and love them. However, its only very recently that I have been getting into computing and doing things besides the norm. I recently purchased a key lime iBook(The title tells the basic details) off ebay and love it. It runs Tiger, although also has OS 9 installed(I haven't even accessed it yet, I don't know how...thats how ignorant I am...although I am a fast learner). While the following is actually multiple questions, I am in desperate need of some help and/or instructions if anybody is willing. Here goes,

1) How do I access other OS's? (option/alt while start up? Was a tad confused.)

2) Is there anyway I can partition the hard drive to have OS 9, OSX, and some form of Linux (I hear XUBUNTU is the best, especially given the specs of my particular iBook) without having the physical start up disks for OS 9 and OSX - Tiger? If not, any suggestions where I can get a hold of either?

3) Given my particular clamshell, what do you guys recommend as the quickest, user friendly linux OS for me? (I've heard zubuntu and mintppc)

4) How do I go about doing all of the above? (Installing linux, triple booting, etc)

5) Lastly, I've heard the airport card won't work using linux...is this true? I've also heard stories of linux ruining the dvd player...?

I know its a lot to ask for, but I am obsessed with this clamshell, and while it is definitely the oldest Mac I have, its beautiful and I think it'd be a great little device if i could pull it off...I'll even consider removing 9 or Tiger to have a dual boot with some form of Linux, whatever is suggested.

Thanks for putting up with my ignorance, I truly appreciate it!

-JRCTS

I don't believe there is a boot manager that will work with a PPC-based Mac. Both Boot Camp and reFit require Intel-based EFI systems. You can install Linux on your PPC-based Mac (various flavors will work) and overwrite OSX to do so, but I don't believe you can do so while keeping your Mac OS at the same time.

Moreover, you can't run virtual machine software on a PPC Mac either - you are stuck with emulation, which is very slow and the emulators that are out there are no longer supported to my knowledge.

Wish I had better news for you. Perhaps someone else can chime in.

Cheers

Yes You Can!

SammySlim said:

I don't believe there is a boot manager that will work with a PPC-based Mac. Both Boot Camp and reFit require Intel-based EFI systems. You can install Linux on your PPC-based Mac (various flavors will work) and overwrite OSX to do so, but I don't believe you can do so while keeping your Mac OS at the same time.

Moreover, you can't run virtual machine software on a PPC Mac either - you are stuck with emulation, which is very slow and the emulators that are out there are no longer supported to my knowledge.

Wish I had better news for you. Perhaps someone else can chime in.

Cheers

Click to expand...

This is eminently doable. (In fact, I have done something similar)
First, you are going to have to scrounge installation disks for the OS's you want to use. A PPC download for xbuntu is an Open Source download. The others. . . .

If you have stuff, or an installation you want to keep, download the trialware of SuperDuper. and save it off somewhere as a .dmg file.

Use Disk Utility off of the Tiger disk to create five partitions:
#1. 16 megs for yaboot (the boot loader)
#2. Whatever size you want for the first Mac OS.
#3. Whatever size you want for the second Mac OS
#4. Whatever size you want for the Xbuntu install (but save 2 gigs for the last partition)
#5. 2 gigs for Linux swap space.

I formatted my partitions like this from within Disk Utility:
Partitions 1, 2, and 3 as HPFS+
(I have never done a Mac OS-9 install so I don't know what format it needs.)
Partitions 4 and 5 as "Unix"
Xbuntu's partitioner does not read the Mac's (BSD) partition structure correctly and it will identify important partition structures as "free space" so you need to mark the partitions you want to use for Xbuntu by giving them some bogus format.

Install the two Mac OS's into partitions #2 and 3. (or restore the .dmg file into one of those partitions using the "restore" feature in Disk Utility.)
Verify that they both boot, and you can switch between them.

Using the Xbuntu install CD, install Linux. When you get to the "partition" part of the install, you must select the option to partition the drive *MANUALLY*

You will notice that there are many partitions there - more than just five - with many of them marked "free space:" DO NOT TOUCH THE FREE SPACE as these partitions are the hidden BSD partition maps for the five partitions you created before. If you screw these up, the whole machine can be borked beyond recognition. So, stay away from the "free space"

From the manual install page you need to do three things:
1. Find the 16 meg partition, select "change" and then change the partition type into "New Age".
2. Find the 4th and 5th partitions you created - they will be marked as an "unknown" partition type. Again go to "change" for each partition. The first partition you should format as ext4, mounted at "/" and the second one you should format as "swap space".

Finding these partitions will be a bit tricky because of all the "free space" scattered around. Be careful.

3. Exit back up to the main partitioning page and "continue" the installation. It will (should) install yaboot into the first partition you marked as "New Age" and will arrange for it to be blessed so that it can be used to boot the Mac.

When you reboot, you should see a (possibly very tiny), menu with three choices: Linux, OS9 and OSX. If you do not see this but boot directly into Xbuntu, open a terminal window and type sudo yboot -v (the -v lets you see some interesting, and humorous status messages.)

Reboot and everything should be set correctly. If you continue to have problems, do a web search for "yaboot".

Jim (JR)