[X-Unix] Installing Darwin from Aluminum PowerBook G4

[William H. Magill]

On 09 Feb, 2005, at 16:43, Stephen Jonke wrote:
> I tried booting my PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz with the Darwin 7.0.1 boot CD, 
> which seems to be the latest boot CD, but it won't boot this system, 
> presumably because it is based on 10.3.0. So... has anyone had 
> experience with installing Darwin, especially installing from source? 
> I'd like to go straight to the latest Darwin 7.7 which is based on 
> 10.3.7, but the source code doesn't come with helpful instructions. 
> It's not even clear if the source code provided is Darwin, or if it is 
> just a bunch of packages you can install in Darwin. At least nothing 
> is named with an obvious name such as "Darwin". It seems to be a hodge 
> podge. Any help would be appreciated. I want, specifically, to install 
> Darwin on an external drive.

One assumes that you are talking about the Commercial distribution of 
Darwin available from the BSD folks. That's the only Darwin "kit" I 
know of that comes on CD. Anything else, you have to burn your own CDs, 
and 9 times out of 10, burning the CD is where the problem begins.

The Darwin 7.0.1 Distribution from BSD Mall ( 
http://mall.daemonnews.org/darwin.html ) has two different Boot CDs -- 
one for Power PCs and one for x86 machines, make certain that you are 
using the correct one.

As far as I know it should boot on any G4.  (I can't verify that as I 
only have the 6.0 distribution.) [ G5s are a different story.] You 
should direct your question to the open Darwin folks. 
(www.opendarwin.org).

The distribution contains three things -- the binary distribution, an 
assortment of add-on packages, and the Source code for both Darwin and 
most of the packages.  The "source code" is named (at least on the 
6.0.1 CDs from BSD) "Source Code." When working with source code, there 
is a basic assumption that the person involved has a pretty solid idea 
of what it is they are doing.  That being the case, all of the 
tar-balls have names which indicate explicitly what they are -- both 
function and version.

Installing from source is something that is for experts. It is not a 
trivial process, nor one easily explained. (This is true for ANY Unix 
or Linux variant.) It is also quite time consuming. If you are 
intending to compile the ENTIRE operating system and all its libraries, 
the number of hours can easily be 8 or 10 hours and more! Simply 
compiling, or re-compiling the kernel against pre-compiled libraries by 
contrast can take a relatively short period of time, possibly measured 
in minutes ... "it all depends."

Installing the binary distribution (like the CD distribution you 
evidently have) is a different story; Darwin should install as easily 
as OS X, and in the same amount of time.

BTW, don't forget, the Darwin distribution has ONLY a command line 
interface. Darwin does not include the AQUA GUI (i.e. the Finder). You 
can optionally install an X11 interface, but AQUA is Apple proprietary, 
and only available with OS X.

As for installing Darwin on an external drive, it should be no 
different than installing OSX on an external drive ... but first you 
have to be able to boot (or at least read) the CD.
[Of course, assuming you have sufficient drive space, you could 
down-load all the the code from the website and work from there -- see 
the OpenDarwin website ( www.opendarwin.org ) for information and 
instructions.]

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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