Installing Linux on my Mac's external hard drive

December 22, 2006 3:36 PM

Is there anywhere I can find step-by-step instructions for installing a Linux distro (Ubuntu in particular) on my PowerBook G4's external hard drive?

I currently use a PPC-based PowerBook G4 and I'd like to be able to install Linux on my external hard drive, so that I don't have to mess with my laptop's internal hard drive. The drive can be connected using Firewire 800 or USB 2.0, so that's not an issue. I've searched all over for help but no one seems to have a good answer or a step-by-step guide to doing this. Any help would really be appreciated!

posted by Aanidaani to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Have you tried booting from the liveCD and then going through the basic install steps? IIRC, when you install, it asks you to choose a hard drive partition. Everything else should follow normally.
posted by b1tr0t at 3:40 PM on December 22, 2006

My issue is with the bootloader. Apparently it doesn't recognize the external or otherwise has issues with booting off the external.
posted by Aanidaani at 3:42 PM on December 22, 2006

I've never installed Ubuntu or any other distro on a Mac, but I think you should just be able to install the bootloader on your internal drive which will in turn attempt to boot Linux from the external drive when you choose Ubuntu from the boot menu.
posted by Venadium at 4:02 PM on December 22, 2006

Try contacting this guy.
posted by flabdablet at 11:51 PM on December 22, 2006

This blog (macubuntu.blogspot.com) has a set of instructions (in the entry titled " NAILED: HOWTO install bootable mac ubuntu on your external firewire harddrive").
posted by concrete at 12:19 AM on December 23, 2006

I know it's exactly NOT what you need, but as a service to others who may wander in here- if you have an Intel-based Mac with Parallels, this guy has made downloadable images of several Linux/BSD-flavored OS's.
posted by mkultra at 9:23 AM on December 23, 2006