Installing Yellow Dog Linux on RS/6000 43p

From Robert Marcano's personal website

[edit] Building the kernel

In order to install Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 was required to compile a kernel with some patches. I decided to use the kernel version 2.4.21. the main reason to not use the binary kernels found at http://www.solinno.co.uk/7043-140/ is that YD Linux installer (anaconda) mounts a loop device from a file that has the CRAM filesystem, and this filesystem is disabled on those kernels. Another requirement made by anaconda is LVM support

I have only one PowerPC based system, so the only way to build the kernel was to prepare a crosscompiler on an i386 Linux machine following the steps documented at penguinppc.org

The kernel version 2.4.21 was downloaded from the penguinppc.org kernel sources page and the patches applied are located here. Two diferents kernel where built 2.4.21-robmv_boot (simple kernel used to start the installer) and 2.4.21-robmv (a kernel with more options enabled as modules to be used when YD is already installed). You can find the configuration files for those kernels here too

[edit] Before installing

In order start the installer program, you must generate a boot diskette using the following commands:

./preptool -s"root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 ramdisk_size=128000" zImage.prep-robmv_boot
dd if=zImage.prep-robmv_boot of=/dev/fd0

and a ram disk (file named images/ramdisk.image.gz located in the first YD CDROM)

dd if=/mnt/cdrom/images/ramdisk.image.gz of=/dev/fd0

The preptool command configures the kernel parameters that are used by the boot kernel. If you connect a terminal to the serial port 1 you will be able to set those parameters before linux boot

Configure your RS/6000 firmware boot order in order to allow to the floppy disk to boot before the hard disks

Insert your boot diskette and restart your machine. You will be prompted to insert the ram disk, when it is loaded the text version of anaconda will start

[edit] Installing

Now you can install YD normally. The only thing that you must be aware is to create an 8MB partition at the start of the disk (in this document I will refer to it as /dev/sda1), then you can use the remaining disk space for your linux partitions. Do not create LVM partitions, for some reason I was unable to use the LVM user space tools (by segfaults)

[edit] Post Instalation

In order to boot your recently installed system you must create a new boot diskette with the following commands

./preptool -s"root=/dev/sdaX" zImage.prep-robmv_boot
dd if=zImage.prep-robmv_boot of=/dev/fd0

where /dev/sdaX is your root partition (the one your defined as / on the YD installer). Now you can boot your machine using this diskette.

When the system is up, transfer to it the files named zImage.prep-robmv, preptool and modules-2.4.21-robmv.tgz, then execute the following comands (in this document the scripts assume the the files were transferred to /root)

/root/preptool -s"root=/dev/sdaX" zImage.prep-robmv
dd if=zImage.prep-robmv of=/dev/sda1
cd /lib/modules
tar -xzvf /root/modules-2.4.21-robmv.tgz

Now you only need to complete one step in order to make your system to boot normally, execute fdisk on the boot device:

fdisk /dev/sda

Use the fdisk options to change the /dev/sda1 partition id to 41 (PPC PReP Boot) using the t key. Set the partition /dev/sda1 bootable using the a key, write the changes (w key). Now you can reboot your system.