First of all, the Debian installer did not work for me (it could not detect my hard drive) and another version I tried detected it but was completely buggy.
Florian Reitmeir and Imobach González Sosa reported it had worked for them, and you should probably try the sarge installer, so here is the link:
new (beta) Debian Installer.
Otherwise, you need to get Ethan Benson's ISO image
boot-new-powermac-xfs.iso. I did not use the XFS file-system and selected Ext3 instead.
(<godsmacker> and Ethan Benson himself have reported that the boot-new-powermac is said not to work, so you should go for the XFS one instead: "the XFS ISO has [several] bug-fixes and new hardware support".)
Burn this ISO, using for example:
cdrecord -v boot-new-powermac-xfs.iso
(I burned it on another machine...)
If you have not set your Cd-burner in /etc/cdrecord/cdrecord,
it will expect an additional dev=x,x,x parameter where x,x,x are given by the command
cdrecord --scanbus.
Unlike PC, Macintosh computers do not have a BIOS, so in order to have it to boot from the Cd, you will need to keep the key c pressed during the boot
(it seems to be right after / during the power-on sound).
If you were stuck at any moment you can reboot by holding Ctrl and the Apple key down while pressing the Power button.
Proceed with a regular Debian installation.
Needless to say mac-fdisk does not look really pretty at first sight, so first of all press p to see the list of partitions
You should have several of these types: Apple_FWDriver, Apple_Driver_IOKit, Apple_Patches, Apple_HFS, I decided to reset this by removing them all and giving the maximum of space to the Operating System, although it could be somehow silly since I do not know what those partitions were exactly used for (I was told it could be for Mac 9 backward compatibility)...
Note that changes will only be applied when writing (w).
You can reset the table by pressing i and hitting Enter twice.
Now press p after each partition creation in order to get directly the correct block number.
Press b to create a bootstrap partition (800 kB) right after the first partition (Apple_partition_map), it will start at the sum of the length and the base of the previous partition, in my case, it was 63+1=64.
You can let mac-fdisk do this automatically by typing 2p instead of 64, it will know where to make it to start. Proceed the same way for all the other partitions
Then create your swap partition, using the c command, setting it at your memory size (you can always open a second console by typing Alt Fn F2 exactly in this order... and type in free in order to get your memory size in kB).
You must name it 'swap'.
Proceed the same way for the root partition, keep some free space for MacOSX if you want to, and name it 'root'.
Create another partition that you will kill with MacOSX partitioner on installation.
Finding the length of the last partition may seem complex, just type in the number of blocks of the remaining free space and this will save you from having to deal with a complex conversion.
Check one last time that everything you need is here. Shown below in this example is my partition table:
pomme:/home/seb# mac-fdisk /dev/hdc
/dev/hdc
Command (? for help): p
/dev/hdc
# type name length base ( size ) system
/dev/hdc1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hdc2 Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap 1600 @ 64 (800.0k) NewWorld bootblock
/dev/hdc3 Apple_HFS MacOSX 20717568 @ 1664 ( 9.9G) HFS
/dev/hdc4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 1283856 @ 20719232 (626.9M) Linux swap
/dev/hdc5 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root 56137072 @ 22003088 ( 26.8G) Linux native
Block size=512, Number of Blocks=78140160
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Command (? for help):
And write your partition table to the disk using the command w.
(More information about this process can be found there:
http://penguinppc.org/projects/yaboot/doc/mac-fdisk-basics.shtml)
Continue with installation.
Yaboot is the bootloader for NewWorld Power Macintoshs,
Shown below is my /etc/yaboot.conf:
## yaboot.conf generated by yabootconfig 1.0.7
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ
## Note: the hard drive is currently hdc because the installation does not do the hdc / hda switch,
## you will need to change this after installing a new kernel (keep reading ...)
boot=/dev/hdc2
device=hd: # should be an alias check /proc/device-tree/aliases/hd (thanks <sourdough>)
partition=5
root=/dev/hdc5
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot # Adds an entry to boot from a cdrom
fgcolor=yellow
bgcolor=blue
image=/vmlinux
label=Linux
macosx=/dev/hdc3