Testing GRUB from other distros.
As previously requested [1, 2], I did some tests regarding GRUB on PPC64
as provided by other distributions.
I did my tests on a PowerMac G5 late 2005.
My attempts failed miserably.
Fedora:
I was unable to boot Fedora 27. The image was dd'ed in a usb stick and
booted by openfirmware (boot hd:,\\:tbxi).
The installer never started and I ended up in a recovery shell.
I noticed that they used GRUB to boot the CD.
OpenSUSE:
I was able to install OpenSUSE tumbleweed. I used dd and usb boot as in
Fedora. I was not very comfortable with the installation procedure and I
just followed the default choices.
This was not a good idea because I ended up partitioning the hard drive
with a GPT partition scheme. Now openfirmware can not see the contents
of this drive and I can not boot openSUSE.
I can not tell for sure, but I do not remember any other choice more
than GPT. I would like to try the installation again to check, but for
some reason the boot of the image hangs and I can not access the
installer anymore... I tried several times without any success.
I noticed that the installer was not able to read partition tables
created by using mac-fdisk / debian installer. So I suppose they do not
support Apples after all...
I noticed that they used GRUB to boot the CD too.
Gentoo:
Some time ago I tried gentoo on this same machine, and noticed that they
use GRUB to boot their live-cd, but the installation to HD needs yaboot.
I am not sure how useful this report might be... anyway I did what I could.
I am still available for other tests if needed.
Regards
A.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2018/12/msg00010.html
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2019/03/msg00021.html
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