Gentoo Linux CD freezes up in the middle of booting.

Seph64 · #1 09-05-2008, 03:05 PM

I've tried both the 2007.0 and 2008.0 Universal PPC Installation CDs, and yet both get stuck at the same spot in the boot process.

smp_core99_probe
core99_setup_ cpu done

I've tested a Ubuntu PPC LiveCD, and that works. It's just the Gentoo CDs that stop booting in the middle of the process.

My iBook is a G3 (new-world type since holding C boots up the CD at boot time), 800Mhz, 256MB of Ram.

Does anyone have any potential solutions for this problem?

**cybertron** · #2 09-05-2008, 04:43 PM

In my experience and from what I've read, the Gentoo LiveCD's are not very well maintained and pretty buggy. That probably goes double for the non-x86 versions. If you're willing to do it the old fashioned way you can use the Ubuntu CD to install Gentoo. If you're wanting to use the Gentoo graphical installer then you might want to file a bug report with the PPC Gentoo team, although that's probably not a quick solution.

For quick fixes, have you tried all of the typical acpi=off noapic nolapic etc. kernel parameters? I'm not sure how many of those apply to PPC, but I imagine at least ACPI does.

Seph64 · #3 09-05-2008, 06:06 PM

I just tried those kernel parameters, and they don't seem to do much.

You say that I could use the Ubuntu LiveCD to build the Gentoo system, but do I need any of the Mac partitions in order to keep the system bootable? I do want to replace the OS with Gentoo, but the handbook thus far says that there should be an Apple Partition Map, and an Apple Bootstrap partition alongside the main partition, but I am not seeing any of these in a partition list in cfdisk (unless that utility can't display Mac Partitions?). Is there a good way to display partition information?

I'll probably need to boot the Ubuntu LiveCD in to a console only mode since the GUI keeps swapping left and right making the system at that point completely unusable.

UPDATE: Using the Ubuntu CD with a swap partition seemed to make it more managable. And I got a working Gentoo environment up and running on the iBook. Still a few tweaks to make, but that can come a bit later.