Boot CD fails from external firewire drive

The following steps helped me work around this problem, when an IDE CD-ROM drive is unavailable for install:

1. Install Ubuntu to New Machine (NM) from a 2nd Mac. Put NM into Target Disk Mode (hold down T on boot) and connect it to a 2nd Mac using a Firewire cable. Walk through the installation process normally, being cautious to install to the Firewire Drive (the NM in Targe Disk Mode). Continue installation until yaboot fails. Exit installer (reboot gracefully!)

2. Boot 2nd Mac to OSX. You can verify your NM disk name (diskXs2) by opening Disk Utility. Launch Terminal and issue the following command (in my case X=2):

newfs_hfs -w -v Untitled /dev/disk2s2

This prepare the bootstrap partition (2) to be readable by OpenFirmware.

3. Boot 2nd Mac using Ubuntu Live CD. Be sure NM is still connected and in Target Disk Mode! Open a Terminal Shell, and verify that ieee1394device (sda3) and Untitled (sda2) are mounted. Edit /media/ieee1394device/etc/yaboot.conf, be sure to change all references of sda to hda, and verify that the "device=" line reads "device=hd:". Copy yaboot and yaboot.conf to /media/Untitled. Shut down both Macs.

4. Boot NM into OpenFirmware (Command+Option+O+F on boot). Issue the following two commands:
setenv boot-device hd:2,yaboot
boot

5. Ubuntu install will complete on NM.

Have you tried holding down Option as the machine boots to see if the Firewire-connected CD shows up in the graphical menu?

It's possible, though, that Open Firmware just can't manage to boot from this device, or that it might be able to do so but only if you drop to the OF prompt (hold down Cmd+Opt+O+F at boot), find out the OF path to this device, and type in the right boot rune.

The CD shows up in the boot option menu, but when it is selected, it tries a very short attempt to boot to the firewire device, then kicks back to the boot option menu. I've tried to boot directly to the device via open firmware...

boot fw/inode/sbp-2/disk@0:,\install\powerpc\yaboot

... which does allow me to get to the yaboot prompt, however, yaboot cannot find the yaboot.conf file. Manually typing in the path to the kernel works, but stops when attempting to find the "root=" device.

I don't have my firewire CD drive with me today, but I will attempt to see if this happens to other models next week (if memory serves me correct, I'll have the same problems).

Also tried this on a G4 iMac, with the exact same results. This does not appear to be a machine-specific problem to me.

Also tried on a G5 Powermac. Same Results.

Somehow, my original "Fix" did not configure my laptop correctly, presumably because some hardware detection happens during the install phase, and is not re-detected, well, ever. In my case, PC Card services fail to load using this method (meaning, no wireless card). I'm lucky enough to have a firewire and usb cd drive. I hooked both of them to my machine and did this:

Boot into Open Firmare and do a:
devalias cd /pci@f4000000/firewire/node/sbp-2/disk@0

then:
boot cd:,\install\yaboot

This basically tricks the machine into booting off the firewire CD drive. At the yaboot prompt, I just hit enter, and the kernel loads fine from the firewire drive. Then, I swapped the disc from the firewire drive to the usb drive. The installer probes for the USB device, finds the Ubuntu install CD, and installation continues as normal. Is there a reason why the installer is not configured to load a Firewire drive kernel module?

Hi,

I have a PowerBook G4 and I was able to use laddepp's fix to boot from an external Firewire drive.
I did have to try it a few times. Sometimes, it would fail on a 'CLAIM failed' error message.

Regards,
Jeroen

This bug hasn't seen any activity for a while. Is this still an issue for you? If so, can you confirm with the latest packages?

Thanks for making Ubuntu better!

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. My apologies as I should not have marked this Invalid. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Maverick Meerkat. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.