PegasosQuickStart102

From openSUSE

SUSE Linux 10.2 quick installation guide for Pegasos PPC and Open Desktop Workstation users

First of all, a big thank you to the openSUSE POWER team! Pegasos PPC is now fully supported by openSUSE! This means, that:

• YaST partitioner module now fully handles Amiga partition tables, which is the recommended way of using a HDD on a Pegasos
• The default partition type became ext3, which means, that there is no need for a separate boot partition
• Yaboot is used for booting, which makes it a lot more easy

Summary: this guide can be a lot shorter, a lot less workarounds to list :-)

RAM requirement

For a normal CD or DVD installation 256MB of RAM is enough. Installing 'factory' requires at least 384MB of RAM, as data for packages on all platforms is read by the package manager (20000+ packages instead of about 8000). If there is already a swap partition, it can be activated before starting YaST

Downloading

There are three choices:

• 5 + 1 + 1 CD (least packages, separate non-OSS and language CD)
• 1 DVD (best for most users)
• ftp distribution (most packages, huge, but enough to download a boot.ppc.iso and the rest is downloaded as needed)

More information is available at http://en.opensuse.org/Download

Booting the installer

Once you have your installation media prepared, it's time to get started with installation. First, you need to escape to the OpenFirmware prompt. This can be done by hitting ‘Esc’ during the countdown, or if you have a boot menu, choose the appropriate entry. The next code sample shows, how to boot the installation system from a CD. It is the same for CD1 or the miniboot. The linemode=0 parameter is there to provide an easy to use curses based menu interface to installation settings, instead of a line based, which is ideal for serial console environments.

The command to boot from CD is:

boot cd suseboot/inst32 linemode=0

The command to boot inst32 copied to the root of the third ext3 partition is:

boot hd:2 inst32 linemode=0

What happens next, depends on how installation of SUSE Linux 10.1 was started:

If you burned the five CDs, and booted from CD1, or from the DVD, then you can sit back and relax for about two minutes, until you reach a graphical screen asking you which language to use during installation. You can safely skip the following chapter and continue here: http://en.opensuse.org/PegasosQuickStart102#Starting_of_the_graphical_installation

If there are troubles getting into the graphical installation screen (and you're welcomed with a text based one), you may want to try the following variant when booting the system:

boot cd suseboot/inst32 video=radeonfb:1024x768@75 linemode=0

Setting up the installation environment

If you don't have CD1 / DVD in your drive, you will be first presented with some questions before reaching the same stage of the installation. These are required to find the installation sources.

At first a blue screen appears, still in text mode. It will stay like this, until all information is gathered, and the installation software can be loaded.

The very first request is to put CD1 in your drive. This is not an error, the default installation mode is to use your CD/DVD drive. It is possible to choose other installation sources as boot parameters, but it's more convenient (less typing, and less documentation reading) to choose installation sources using a curses based menu system. If you don't have the CD in the drive you need to use the right arrow or tab to get to 'back' and hit 'enter' to continue.

Here the language of installation can be selected. All languages use their own character sets, some more exotic ones can not be read at all. For these English or an other language with 'Latin' type characters is suggested. This can be changed later on the graphical installation screen. Up/down arrows can be used to choose another language, and 'enter' to use that and continue with installation. The main menu of linuxrc (the tool used to set up the installation environment) is shown.

If network installation is to be used, the first menu to visit is 'Kernel Modules (Hardware Drivers)'. The menu works with up and down arrows and Enter/Escape. First enter the 'Kernel Modules' menu, and next choose 'Load ppc Modules'.

There are two ethernet ports on the Pegasos mother board. The left one is a gigabit ethernet interface, which requires the mv643xx_eth driver to be loaded. The right one is a 10/100 ethernet interface, the via-rhine driver is needed by this one. Just hit 'Enter' to load them and follow on screen instructions. You don't need any other modules to be able to install SUSE Linux on an ODW over the network, so escape back to the main menu.

To get started with installation, choose 'Start Installation or System'. This brings to another menu. The first one is needed to start installation, but the other two are also important:

• 'Start Installation or Update' starts a new installation
• 'Boot installed system' allows booting an already installed system.
• 'Start Rescue System' starts a mini Linux with lot's of handy tools.

As installation is just started, the first menu entry is to be chosen. This shows another menu:

• CD-ROM: does not have much use here, except when drivers need to be loaded before CD based installation can go on.
• Network: FTP/HTTP/NFS/SMB
• Hard Disk: from a partition

If you choose 'Hard Disk', you are presented with a list of partitions on the system. First, you have to choose the partition, where installation sources are to be found, and then enter the path relative to that partition. For example, if you copied the installation CDs to your /home partition in directory ‘suse101’, and /home is /dev/hda5, then choose /dev/hda5 as partition and /suse101/CD1/ as source directory. The rest of the directories will be used automatically.

From the network install, FTP has the most questions. If you forgot to load the kernel module for networking, you will be presented with a big, red warning message. Other way, you are asked, if you want to use DHCP for network configuration. If not, be prepared to answer some questions about your network. The first is: the IP address of your machine, netmask fallows (with defaults for a class C network filled id), IP of the gateway machine, IP of the name server, and finally IP of the ftp server. You can use the name of ftp server here, if there is a proper DNS entry for that machine. Then choose, if you need a username to reach the ftp site, or a HTTP proxy. At the end, you have to specify a source directory, including CD1 in the name, if you set up the installation source yourself from CDs, or 'inst-source', if you use the 'factory' distribution.

In a few seconds or minutes, depending on your network speed, you will get to the same graphical screen mentioned already at the beginning of the document.

Starting of the graphical installation

The first menu appearing on the graphical screen is the 'language' menu. It looks much better as the previously mentioned 'language' menu, as this one has correctly displayed characters from many different languages. What you choose here, influences a lot of things. Not only the language of the installation program, YaST, but if a software package has language extensions, like KDE or OpenOffice.org, it will be automagically selected during software installation based on this choice (this can be modified in the package manager). So, choose your language, and go to the next screen. You can check the integrity of your installation CDs, if you use them for installation. Other way, the next screen is about accepting the 'License Agreement' of SUSE Linux. (During beta testing, an extra window reminds, that it's a beta release, and there is no support at all. To continue, one has to accept both.)

Hardware detection comes next. This also means, that drivers are loaded, and if you don’t use CD1 for installation, YaST asks for your permission in some cases. It is possible, that you get another few kernel module related questions, and then you are presented with the 'Installation mode' menu. On first installation you need to use the default setting: 'New Installation'. 'Update' helps to update from a previous version of SUSE Linux. 'Other' has some important possibilities, well hidden, namely 'Boot Installed System' which might be needed if 'yaboot' fails on you. There you can choose which partition to boot.

Starting a new installation

If you 'Update' your SuSE installation, chances are high, that you don't need this guide :-) For the rest 'New installation' is to be used.

It must be mentioned here: no data is written to disc, until at the end of installation settings, you click the 'Accept' button and answer 'Yes' to the question. Until that you are free to abort the installation process, and no change is made to the system.

The first screen will allow to set the time and/or timezone. The next question is a bit more difficult: choosing a desktop environment. KDE was much better supported by SUSE for a long time, the difference is getting smaller now. Use 'other' if you don't want any of these large desktop environments, or text mode only.

The 'Installation Settings' overview page will appear. It shows the defaults, what YaST thinks the best for us. Be aware, that if there is anything on the HDD, YaST might suggest resizing partitions and create new ones. Check partitioning settings carefully before accepting them. Usually it's worth to continue installation on the 'Expert' page.Installation settings can be changed by clicking on bold underlined texts looking like links on a web page.

Partitioning

openSUSE 10.2 has ext3 as default partition type. Unlike 'reiserfs', it's supported by OpenFirmware. 'Yaboot' is installed in the root directory, so it's better to keep the / partition as ext3. Next to the root partition, a swap partition is needed as well.

The partitioner can make full use of the Amiga partition table: when an empty HDD is used this is the type created.

Software

Software selection works the same way, as on any other platforms, and well described in the manuals.

Booting

Nothing has to be changed here, 'Yaboot' will be installed in the root directory.

Committing installation

Up until now, the hard drive was not modified, only information about installation was collected. When the 'Accept' button is clicked, there is a last chance to modify settings or abort the installation. When 'Install' is clicked, the installation is carried out according to settings made in the previous menus.

At first, partitions are formatted and mounted and next software packages are installed. It takes some time. Estimate of remaining time can be tracked on screen. After the content of CD1 is installed, the computer is rebooted. Please see next chapter for booting instructions. After rebooting the system, the installer will ask another round of questions and finally a login screen appears.

Booting the installed system

Booting became very simple with openSUSE 10.2. 'Yaboot' is used for booting the system. The OF command line is very easy. If you have your root partition on /dev/hda5 then the command is:

boot hd:4 yaboot

It starts up the 'Yaboot' boot manager. If nothing is changed for a few seconds, the system starts up.

I tested 'Yaboot' with many different firmware versions, and it worked fine. If it fails, please refer to the PegasosQuickStart 10.1 installation manual, which shows how to boot from the CD and how to create a bootable kernel image.