> On Apr 13, 2019, at 5:39 AM, Frank Scheiner <frank.schei...@web.de> wrote:
>
> Do you happen to have a smaller disk (e.g. below 128 GB) available for
> use? Or maybe you try with a separate small (512 MiB or so) `/boot`
> partition directly after the HFS bootstrap partition, so the kernel is
> located in the first GiB of this disk.
Thanks, Frank! That was the clue it needed.
I used the 2019-04-12 iso for my most recent test, just incase there was a
change that might affect the problem.
I did everything the same as I did for the original test, except that when it
got to partitioning the disk, I chose guided partitioning and “Use whole disk,
with LVM”. The LVM part forces it to create a separate /boot partition
directly after the HFS one.
That installed GRUB, which booted without a hitch.
So it appears that this model of PowerMac has boot firmware that doesn’t like
the high-address parts of large disk drives. Interestingly enough, this
problem does not seem to affect the Linux kernel. Once past the bootstrap
firmware, it works fine with the 300GB disk.
Thanks to all!
Rick
root@dillserver:~# df -HTP | grep -v tmpfs
> Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/dillserver--vg-root ext4 58G 1.1G 54G 2% /
> /dev/sda3 ext2 248M 44M 192M 19% /boot
> /dev/sda2 hfs 20M 9.1M 11M 46% /boot/grub
> root@dillserver:~# mac-fdisk -l /dev/sda
> /dev/sda
> # type name length base (
> size ) system
> /dev/sda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 (
> 31.5k) Partition map
> /dev/sda2 Apple_Bootstrap untitled 39063 @ 64 (
> 19.1M) NewWorld bootblock
> /dev/sda3 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled 500001 @ 39127
> (244.1M) Linux native
> /dev/sda4 Linux_LVM untitled 624603271 @ 539128
> (297.8G) Unknown
> /dev/sda5 Apple_Free Extra 49 @ 625142399 (
> 24.5k) Free space
>
> Block size=512, Number of Blocks=625142448
> DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
> root@dillserver:~# lvs
> LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log
> Cpy%Sync Convert
> root dillserver-vg -wi-ao---- 54.44g
>
> swap_1 dillserver-vg -wi-ao—— 1.43g
>
> root@dillserver:~# vgs
> VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree
> dillserver-vg 1 2 0 wz—n- 297.83g <241.96g
> root@dillserver:~# lsblk
> NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
> sda 8:0 0 298.1G 0 disk
> |-sda1 8:1 0 31.5K 0 part
> |-sda2 8:2 0 19.1M 0 part /boot/grub
> |-sda3 8:3 0 244.1M 0 part /boot
> |-sda4 8:4 0 297.9G 0 part
> | |-dillserver--vg-root 254:0 0 54.5G 0 lvm /
> | `-dillserver--vg-swap_1 254:1 0 1.4G 0 lvm [SWAP]
> `-sda5 8:5 0 24.5K 0 part
