User:Scheidel21

It has come to my attention that many users of PPC linux versions have been having some difficulty with installing newer version of linux with the 2.6 kernel on an oldworld powermac. This WIKI details, very briefly, since the solution is brief, how to make the 2.6 kernel work with BootX on an oldworld powermac.

BootX is for many of us oldworld powermac users the easiest way to boot linux on our machines. The only problem is that the 2.6 kernel does not operate as some of the older kernels do and therefore cause a problem for us. The Problem is hanging on boot and sometimes seeing a

kernel panic unable to mount root FS append a correct root= argument.

Well I had this issue myself, after an exhaustive search I finally came across the solution albeit in a translation from a turkish website.

To make a 2.6 Kernel boot from BootX follow the steps below.

1)Install a kernal image .deb or .rpm, or compile the Kernel yourself and make a initrd.img file.

2)Copy the Kernel and initrd.img to your linux Kernels folder in the MacOS system folder on your Mac partition. This is easily done by mounting the Mac filesystem in linux and copying it over

3)Reboot the machine

4)When the BootX screen comes up select the new 2.6 Kernel, then click the options button and choose the ramdisk option selecting the initrd.img you copied as the Ramdisk. Then select OK.

5)In the boot arguments box on the bottom of the BootX control Panel type in: root=/dev/hda9 devfs=mount,all rw

replace hda9 with the appropriate device and partition for your root filesystem.

6)Select Save to Preferences

7)Boot linux with your new 2.6 Kernel

I am not a programmer and therefore have limited insight as to how the inards of Kernel work, but it is my understanding this problem occured due to the way in which the 2.6 Kernel loads, apparently before it loads your root partition it performs a check of your hardware which requires it to be booted with an initial ramdisk image aka initrd.img Hope this helps some of you.