466Mhz G4 - what OS to install? :-)

AdmiralAK

AdmiralAK

Simply Daemonic
So, I've come to inherit a G4 (greyish model, pre-quicksilver). Nice machine, Dual monitor output, large enough HD, and 256MB of RAM.

It has Panther on it, however since I already have a panther machine running in my office (and an XP/BeOS x86 machine as well), I was looking for something to run on it. I was thinking of tinkering with server stuff (create a small dept. server for storage and so on).

Now, since I do not have the moolah for X server (man I wish I did :D - or at least the money for an ADC membership that keeps giving and giving :D ), I was thinking of either BSD or Linux.

ANyone have any experience? Good ? bad? ugly? so-so?
What would you recommend? what should I avoid? what to expect? :D


Danke :)

Admiral
 
Why not stick with Panther? You'd be able to do anything that the Server version of the OS can - but you may have to do it under the hood where BSD is already running things.

Gabs

(Dissafected ex-user of Mac OS X Server 10.2.x)
 
I have a panther machine already running :) (my main one). I do not have a 10.3 server license so I cannot use it :)
 
Hiya AdmiralAK - I actually meant using the client version of the OS. You can tinker away all you want - no restrictions on the number of users, full powered BSD.

If you want another "flavour" of OS visible in your office you could log in as console and avoid the Mac GUI.

The main issues that I remember were that you'll run into permissions issues with the GUI that prevent members of the same group from editing the same file (and I don't mean concurrently), and Apple's proprietary NetInfo stuff that is alien to any other *NIX.

File sharing should be trivial...

Gabs the ex-semiserveradmin
 
Hi again - funnily enough today there's an interesting enough article over at MacDevCentre not so much about "Scripting Dot Mac" as an overview of setting up your own server on various flavours.
 
Howabout a vanilla Darwin install? It would sure get you used to using the command-line as well as manually configuring services, and even compiling your own software from source.

I think a good, working knowledge of UNIX without the help of a GUI is a good thing. Plus, no GUI means less overhead and more system resources, which make for a faster machine.
 
I had some good experience with Yellow Dog Linux. It's efficient and relatively easy to install on my B&W G3 400 MHz, 400 MB. But I'm no server guru.
 
If you're a tinkerer's tinkerer and/or you want maximum performance for YOUR machine, you might could check out Gentoo or LinuxFromScratch. But I also like Diablo's idea of a non-GUI Darwin install.
 
nice :)
I think I will download YDL, Darwin and Gentoo and go from there
I mainly want to tinker away while setting up something new. I have no time-limit since this is a service that no one asked from me.


Thanks for the chime in (and of course if there are more suggestions or comments chime on)


Admiral
 
Use Panther Client if you want to just install and use it as a fileserver. Unless you really want to get tinkering with linux (which I find the wrong thing to do if it's simply a fileserver you want), Panther has all the needed stuff, runs fine on the machine etc.
 
Tinker with Mandrake Linux. Its well packaged, fun to install, and is somewhat upto date with Intel version. There are SPARC versions and so forth also, this notion alone might make it an positive exercise to have back to back Intel/PPC etc and see if they are indeed the same.

I had a wee test a year ago and Mandrake behaved the same way in most respects on the two platforms. Which might be a good thing if you had to make a computer room out of a mixture of older machines. Its was fun though having a look.

I think I've had too much wine, its after 11:00pm here.
 
Man, now I feel retarded.... (I've isntalled countless linuxen on x86, never had this problem)

So, I installed YDL 4.0 on the 466G4 machine. All went OK, prompted me to reboot after the installer had done it's thing, yaboot came up, (l) was chosen...and it started doing it's thing.

well...it does not boot. It gives me an error "no disk in drive" --- umm...huh? pardon? what does it want? A disk in the internal zip drive? a disk in the optical drive? - I am thinking of re-installing the thing - but I do not know what the problem is. The only reference to this error coming up was about an externalzip that needed to be disconnected before the computer would boot.
 
Did you create a bootstrap partition for the kernel? If my memory serves me right, I installed YDL on a 300 MHz iBook clamshell once. The first time, I hadn't created the bootstrap partition for yaboot to boot the Linux side. Once I had created that partition (I read that it can be something like 20 MB was enough, but YMMV), I had the bootloader install the files it needed there (I believe it was the kernel and some other files), everything worked perfectly.

I also remember that the bootstrap partition had to be HFS Standard, but you might want to check that as I was using an earlier version of YDL (3.x).
 
Ttry and do a manual installation. You might still see some of the partitions when you get back into installing YDL. This way, you can see if the autopartitioner actually did it's job. If not, you may have to do it manually.
 
you really want to tinker? find someone with a g5 Xbox II kit. make the NT kernel boot on a non-g5 powermac. then realise the monster you have created and go on a rampage, destroying every piece of evidence that NT ever ran on a PPC system.
 
Pengu said:
you really want to tinker? find someone with a g5 Xbox II kit. make the NT kernel boot on a non-g5 powermac. then realise the monster you have created and go on a rampage, destroying every piece of evidence that NT ever ran on a PPC system.
Click to expand...

lol - that is reserved for people with more money (and time) than I :D
 
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