Anybody Got Puppy Linux running on an Intel Mac Mini?

[Reggie]

For all of us who left WinDoze years ago,
but want to dual boot Puppy Linux / Mac OS X.

Anybody Got Puppy Linux running on an Intel Mac Mini?

Looking for tips, ideas, how-to's . . .

[alienjeff]

I've lusted for a Mac Mini for months now ... just can't bring myself to part with the $$$.

Have you at least tried booting Puppy on one? If so, how about a little report?

[pklipp]

I booted Puppy Linux from the standard CD on my intel mac with no trouble at all, but the audio drivers don't work. This would be no problem, but it means I can't use Skype at work and that's not acceptable, so I would love to hear suggestions on getting the sound to work.


Paul

[Gekko]

Find drivers?

[GuestToo]

maybe this might help?
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Apple_M ... und_Config

[John Doe]

Perfect timing, check this out:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=95105

[John Doe]

I'm rooting for all you iMAC/ibook, intel mac, MAC, APPLE, ][C and PowerPC/Motorola, PPC... Puppy LInux People...

In desending chronological order:

(Suggestion: Mac OS HFS and HFS+ (HFS Plus) Support)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=12306

(Complete, Tested and Working HFS+ Support)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?&t=13808

#endorder

One of the keys to booting Puppy Save Files and recognition of partitions for MUT and PMount is libhardware. Barry mods it for NTFS (shouldn't be to difficult to do the same for HFS and HFS+):
http://puppyos.net/blog/comments.php?y= ... 724-043341

Intel Mac users (or whomever), please continue to comment on problems and success (I only have an x86 OS image myself).

[Reggie]

Have you at least tried booting Puppy on one? If so, how about a little report?

Well...
Using a Mac Mini 1.6 GHz - Combo Drive, Core Duo:

What Did NOT Work:
Puppy Linux 2.13 Live CD - Did Not Work.
Downloaded it and burned it to a CD on the Mac Mini, Cold Start Mac holding down the 'C' Key on keyboard - attempt boot from CD. - No go.
Using Puppy Linux 2.13, puppy-2.13-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso

1GB USB Flash Drive with FAT16 MBR Puppy Linux - Did Not Work.
USB Flash Drive shows up fine in OS X, file open and copy works fine to FAT16 USB Stick. Reboot Using Boot Camp - USB not seen as a boot option.

Looking into the details, seems Boot Camp is looking for a GUID Partition Table?
I'm looking for more specific information, but so far the newest Mac Mini don't wanna do it.

I am told the easiest work around is an optional Linux Partition setup.
Even a small partition (1GB) would work. Similar to this:
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_ ... a_BootCamp
Link explains triple boot setup for OS X, Windows, and Linux, but for me - just booting OS X and Puppy Linux is just fine.

But I *REALLY* want to get the whole 'plug-and-go' experience of running Puppy Linux via USB stick on the Mac Mini.

It is so easy to do on the cheapest of BIOS Machines (change boot order - ta-da!) but the Apple doesn't use BIOS, it uses EFI.
http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/

According to the EFI 1.10 standard, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 should all be supported by the Mac Mini EFI:
"The file system supported by the Extensible Firmware Interface is based on the FAT file system. EFI defines a specific version of FAT that is explicitly documented and testable. Conformance to the EFI specification and its associate reference documents is the only definition of FAT that needs to be implemented to support EFI. To differentiate the EFI file system from pure FAT, a new partition file system type has been defined. EFI encompasses the use of FAT32 for a system partition, and FAT12 or FAT16 for removable media. "

So Boot Camp should see the USB stick at startup, but it doesn't understand what it is, or it doesn't consider the USB Stick bootable.

External Hard drives ARE known to work fine for booting Apples (firewire, usb also - I think.)

There also may be hints on how some people are booting Mac OS X from Pen Drives:
http://macgeek.freeflux.net/blog/archiv ... drive.html

[Yes, you can Copy Mac OS X onto a (large) Pen Drive (I recommend a 4GB unit, or a 12 GB minidrive) and run your Apple OS X and Mac programs on a regular old PC - but some things are a bit buggy and the video can be touchy.]

If you like your Puppy Linux to Travel in Style,
here is a line up of 12GB Mini Drives:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/ ... 210032.php
I like the 12GB Stainless Steel Monstor Drive, but the Samsung 12GB might be cheaper - even has a memory buffer, but the disk spins slower.

[puppyfan12]

I'd love to be able to run puppy on my ibook without having to use Qemu (it's so slow). It should run super fast natively on a 1.2Ghz ibook with 768MB ram though. I just haven't seen anyone make a puppy build (or any live linux cd's for that matter) that work with the Power PC (ppc) architecture.

I've only seen Mandrakeppc, Yellowdog, Debian & Ubuntu with regular hard drive install versions.

[Reggie]

I've only seen Mandrakeppc, Yellowdog, Debian & Ubuntu with regular hard drive install versions.

Yup - PowerPC Puppy Linux! - that is a great idea.

I have a G4 Mac also - that was my second project,
I would like to get Puppy Linux USB sticks working on Intel Mac Minis as my first project because I believe it will be the easier project to start with.

I Believe Puppy Linux source can be recompiled and run natively on the G3/G4/G5 CPUs, as long as the drivers are all worked out.
Yellow Dog Linux is my source of inspiration for getting Puppy Linux running on the G4. If Altivec support is possible, that would be great, I think the right compiler would get the job done.

Such infidel apostate blasphemous questions are verboten in Mac fanboy circles, why would you want to erase OS X?!?!?!

But for the Linux tinkerer - it's just another fun project!
Why climb the mountain? Because it is there.

IBM Has this advice for Linux on Power PC systems:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/l ... wer/newto/

IBM Also Lists Hundreds of Linux programs ready to run on the Power PC: *WARNING - Very Large HTML page - long load time*
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/linux/power/apps/all.html

Yellow Dog has been my favorite Power PC Linux:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/resou ... rors.shtml

According to Wikipedia, the POWER6 (G6 cpu) is coming out later in 2007, with the POWER7 (G7 cpu) to be available before 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6
The POWER6 cpu is supposed to run near 5GHz, operate natively in Dual Core mode with 4MB of L2 Cache per core, and 32MB L3 Cache shared.
Theoretically, a slimmed down Puppy Linux could almost run completely from Within the CPU Cache, at almost 5 GHz - Ludicrous Speed!

[John Doe]

Yup - PowerPC Puppy Linux! - that is a great idea.

I've been messing with T2 and it looks like it could be right on the horizon. There would be some work involved rebuilding all the packages.

I would like to get Puppy Linux USB sticks working on Intel Mac Minis as my first project because I believe it will be the easier project to start with.

I think you are correct. Sorry about this garbled mess, but I did an afternoon of research on it and just want to spew it out there for everyone.



--------------
I just looked over EFI and USB booting might be possible with ELILO.

http://elilo.sourceforge.net/
http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Building_elilo

Regarding CD booting, that might not ever happen. This info makes it sound like an entirely different CD would be needed. Although he does say "Macintosh" and not iMac. Maybe there is a way to do the CD easily.

http://www.macdisk.com/hybbooten.php3

"Does the El Torito Standard Applies to Macintosh Computers?
We don't think that this standard applies to Macintosh computers. Macintosh bootable media are plain HFS media, with a volume descriptor in the logical sector 0, then with a partition table in logical sector 1 pointing to the partitions created on the medium (even if the Mac OS never loads from a CD-ROM other partitions than the first one).
More, the Mac OS needs a special driver (called an extension) to access the ISO 9660 CD-ROMs. This extension is not available at boot time, what means that the booting Macintosh can't access the contents of the ISO CD-ROM."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

"On machines that use Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) firmware, this [MBR] design is unsuitable, and the MBR is not used as part of the system bootstrap. Instead the firmware is capable of directly understanding the GPT partitioning scheme and the FAT filesystem format, and loads and runs programs held as files in the EFI System Partition. The MBR will only be involved insofar as it might contain the partition table if the MBR Partition Table scheme has been used."

---------------------

http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-6250/ch04s02.html
http://wiki.debian.org/MacMiniIntel
http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook

---------------------
Boot from the CD (hold down C while booting) and proceed with installation.

If you have strange keyboard problems (double keypresses) or other problems while booting from the install CD, use the following command line on the boot prompt:

install noapic irqpoll acpi=force

If you cannot type anything in the CD/DVD boot prompt (found this problem on MacBook Core 2 Duo), you can fix this with an external USB keyboard or by booting into OS X and restarting while holding the C button pressed (boots directly from CD).


--------------------

OTHER MISC LINKS on the subject:

http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.osxbook.com/
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Apple_MacBook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_sector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/cd-roms.html

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ ... ate11.html

[puppyfan12]

Thanks for all the useful links Reggie & John!

If you experience problems with G3 or G4 ibooks GPU (as I did) here's links that outline the problems with the hardware:

http://www.coreyarnold.org/ibook/

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 64#3249364

The shim trick worked great for me. I'm reluctant to use it as a portable system now though and am just keeping it stationary until I can find a replacement board or better solution as it's very sensitive.

[sulemasc]

im editing this post cuz im too wordy.. and i just got back from a store
Reggie, I just wanted to mention that I too am very interested in the possibilities of Puppy Linux and the Mac. I will soon own a new macbook, and would be interested in using puppy with it, likely using a usb drive. I will watch this thread and keep researching the links.. some of them i kindof understand but its at my borderline understanding..
Mark

[btrumble]

I'm very interested in the possibility of running Puppy in a stable environment on either a G4 with an emulator like VPC, or on a Macbook with an emulator like Parallels. Going out to buy a laptop next week and I can either shop for a PC knowing that it will probably run Puppy -- my everyday OS for the eight months, or I can get a refurbished Apple direct from Apple in either the G4 or the Intel flavors. I'd love to go Apple to take advantage of iMovie, but not if I can't still use Puppy for the bulk of my computing.

[samratrama]

hi,

how to use elilo and efi for booting usb puppy linux. i got information from following link.

http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/HOWTO

but these steps is not working. how to get success.

[sulemasc]

ok i decided to splurge and buy a new i-mac and so far really diggin' it.. soo after partitioning and updating of course i really wanted to try Puppy so burned a 2.14 CD and it booted just fine! Obviously its incredibly fast considering I have been using Puppy on old hardware up to now.
Three observations:
-the optical drive reads slowly so boot takes longer
-Apple ships the mac with a 200mB FAT partition and one big HFS
-Puppy 2.14 boots from CD as a Parallels virtual machine

amazing!
.. Mark (edited)

[GuestToo]

Puppy can probably mount hfs drives, but you probably have hfs+

cat /proc/filesystems | grep hfs

modprobe hfs

modprobe hfsplus
FATAL: Module hfsplus not found.

in /lib/modules/DOTconfig-K2.6.18.1-1FEB07 (Puppy 214):

CONFIG_HFS_FS=m
# CONFIG_HFSPLUS_FS is not set

for hfs+ support, it looks like you would need to recompile the kernel

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_hfsplus

[John Doe]

Here is a screen shot of puppy reading HFSPlus and the modules and utils. I think you might need the kernel also. When I posted that I thought kernel modules could just be moved around, but I'm not sure now:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?&t=13808

[iscraigh]

I'd love a puppy that runs on my old Imacg3. Kubuntu gas a bootable powerpc cd that my Imac boots from and will run but puppy would be nicer.

Craig

[lvds]

I'd love a puppy that runs on my old Imacg3. Kubuntu gas a bootable powerpc cd that my Imac boots from and will run but puppy would be nicer.

Craig

Hi,

Yes i second on that too ! Puppy running on powerpc would be great as nowadays we can find old powerbooks very cheap.

Also, i confirm i have been running my release eXpand v2.14 - Dofus edition fine on a MacMini. I inserted the CD, hold down the C key on keyboard, and puppy booted with no problem. I choose a keyboard, then Xorg 1024x768x24, then i connected to internet on eth0, then ran the firewall auto-magic, then launched firefox and it was all ok.

I tried playing music and xmms came ok but i realised i had no speaker connected
The macmini saw also ath0 interface which i presume is the airport (?)
but i have nothing to test this.

MUT saw a SATA disk but reported it as being vfat instead of HFS, so i closed the window and refrains myself of mounting a good-faithfull-working Mac OSX partition frightened of perhaps breaking something

USB keyboard and mouse (a laser G5 from Logitech) were ok.

Best regards,
Laurent.