Here's how I have LinuxPPC (Yellow Dog Champion Server 1.2) installed on
my Pismo Powerbook G3.

At this point I have four partitions (originally, I didn't have the tiny
HFS partition, though I found out later I may not have needed it...):

hd9   32MB HFS
hd10 4.7GB HFS+
hd11 1.0GB A/UX Root
hd12 128MB A/UX Swap

Tip: use cat /proc/partitions to get a full list of partitions from Linux.

Ethan Benson says that 
the bootstrap partition needs to be of type Apple_Bootstrap, not HFS.

I originally followed the instructions linked from the YD site, here:

 
http://modctek.com/linux_report.htm

involving the 2.2.15 kernel, but quickly realized that BenH's 2.2.17
kernel was likely a better alternative, so that's what I'm running now.
For instance, it supports both the trackpad and external USB mice and
keyboards, and it's what Ben recommends for use withe the airport.

 
http://ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/

I followed the modctek instructions for setting up my yaboot stuff, so
I could boot the installer from the ramdisk.tar.gz I grabbed off the YD
mirror at Metalab. I downloaded the ISO images for YDCS1.2 as well,
and burned the CDs. Installing went smoothly, using the 2.2.15pre14
kernel, and I was up and running in a couple of hours.

So, to sum up: I am booting YDCS1.2 from hd:9,yaboot.tbxi, which is on
my tiny HFS partition, along with the 2.2.17pre10 kernel. I'm booting
MacOS from hd:10,\\.tbxi. I can download files from within MacOS to my
HFS partition, then mount the partition from Linux using 'mount -t hfs
/dev/hda9 /mnt/hfs' to copy stuff on my Linux partitions. Everything's
working fine.

I got the airport module working quickly, using the downloadable
tarball on Ben's page. So no problems there at all (version 0.9.3
under 2.2.17pre10). I still need to hack myself a script that does
the right ifconfigs and insmods for the two airport networks I'm on,
but for the most part it was pretty straightforward: I just created
'ifcfg-airport' in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, a la:

DEVICE=airport
IPADDR=192.168.1.41
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
ONBOOT=yes

I changed ONBOOT to 'no' for eth0, but I think I'll need to change
them /both/ to no, by the time I'm done, and have an rc script do
the appropriate ifup'ing and insmod'ing for whatever airport net
I'm on at the time. As it stands, I have to ifdown ifcfg-airport,
rmmod airport, and then insmod with the appropriate args for whatever
network I'm on, e.g.:

 insmod /path/to/airport.o network_name="example" enc="0DEADBEEF0"

OK, so that's all well and good. I've got linux and MacOS, I've got
wireless networking. Now I need X. I just installed Xautoconfig from
the SRPM (linked from the modctek site) and ran it. I had some
problems with mouseconfig, so I went back and actually read the docs
for the new (2.2.17) kernel, and setup my devices properly:

 cd /dev; rm usbmouse; rm mouse; mkdir input; mknod input/mice c 13 63
 ln -s input/mice mouse; ln -s input/mice usbmouse
 echo "none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0" > usbproc

And everything worked. Yay for open source.

Next, I get a little annoyed with having to boot into open firmware
every time I need to switch OSes (I setenv auto-boot? true so it dumps
me into OF by default, but that's still annoying.) So I did a little
snooping on deja, and found this:

 http://x64.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=646561839

...which tells me I didn't need to create that HFS partition after
all. Oh, well - it's here, and I'm not reinstalling MacOS and Linux
again, so I figure I'll try and learn from the experience and get
rid of the annoying OF thing. So, using Andy's bootinfo.txt as a
guide, I write my own bootinfo.txt (though I named it menu_ofboot.b,
like the files in the yaboot distro) that looks like this:



iMac,1 PowerMac1,1 PowerBook1,1 PowerMac2,1 PowerMac3,1 PowerBook2,1 PowerBook3,1


GNU/Linux PowerPC Boot chooser


" get-key-map" " keyboard" open-dev $call-method
dup 20 dump
5 + c@ 08 = if
" Booting Yaboot ..." cr " boot hd:9,yaboot.tbxi" eval
else
" Booting MacOS ..." cr " boot hd:10,\\:tbxi" eval
then


1010
000000000000F8FEACF6000000000000
0000000000F5FFFFFEFEF50000000000
00000000002BFAFEFAFCF70000000000
0000000000F65D5857812B0000000000
0000000000F5350B2F88560000000000
0000000000F6335708F8FE0000000000
00000000005600F600F5FD8100000000
00000000F9F8000000F5FAFFF8000000
000000008100F5F50000F6FEFE000000
000000F8F700F500F50000FCFFF70000
00000088F70000F50000F5FCFF2B0000
0000002F582A00F5000008ADE02C0000
00090B0A35A62B0000002D3B350A0000
000A0A0B0B3BF60000505E0B0A0B0A00
002E350B0B2F87FAFCF45F0B2E090000
00000007335FF82BF72B575907000000
000000000000ACFFFF81000000000000
000000000081FFFFFFFF810000000000
0000000000FBFFFFFFFFAC0000000000
000000000081DFDFDFFFFB0000000000
000000000081DD5F83FFFD0000000000
000000000081DDDF5EACFF0000000000
0000000000FDF981F981FFFF00000000
00000000FFACF9F9F981FFFFAC000000
00000000FFF98181F9F981FFFF000000
000000ACACF981F981F9F9FFFFAC0000
000000FFACF9F981F9F981FFFFFB0000
00000083DFFBF981F9F95EFFFFFC0000
005F5F5FDDFFFBF9F9F983DDDD5F0000
005F5F5F5FDD81F9F9E7DF5F5F5F5F00
0083DD5F5F83FFFFFFFFDF5F835F0000
000000FBDDDFACFBACFBDFDFFB000000
000000000000FFFFFFFF000000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFF0000000000
0000000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFF00000000
00000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF000000
00000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF000000
000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000
000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000
000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000
00FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000
00FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF00
00FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0000
000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF000000



I grabbed the icon from the yaboot menu_ofboot.b, IIRC, and grabbed
the stuff inside the  block from the MacOS ROM file in
MacOS 9.0.4, because the yaboot distro didn't include the powerbook
version for pismo. (I don't think it did, anyway.) Here's my
yaboot.conf:

## yaboot configuration file generated by ybin 0.16
## 

init-message = "\nWelcome to LinuxPPC\nHit  for boot options.\n\n"
device = hd:9
timeout = 20
default = linuxppc

image = hd:9,vmlinux-2.2.17pre10-ben2
label = linuxppc
root=/dev/hda11
read-only
append = "video=aty128fb:vmode:17"

So now all I have to do is hit 'space' at restart/startup time to
boot into Linux. Whee. Optionally, I can hit 'option' at restart
/startup time to get an abominably slow iconic bootloader menu, with
a cute penguiny icon thingamabob.


More yaboot info:
http://www.georet.net/linux/yaboot.html
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ybin/
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ybin/doc/yaboot-faq.html


More open firmware info and tips:

 to boot into OF, use 'Command-option O-F'.
 to print the current environment, type 'printenv'
 to set a variable, use 'setenv varname value'
 its 'auto-boot?' (with the question mark), not 'auto-boot'.