7. Install the system

7.1. The LinuxPPC-2000 installer

So, now we're actually getting somewhere! Before doing anything, snoop a little around in the installation program. Read the Instructions, and read the credits and about items on the Options Menu. Of course, there will be some talking about PowerMacs here too. This does not apply to us.

It's quite useful to know how the machine reacts when we do something. Therefore: On the Option Menu select Run xinstaller with output window. This will bring up the installer again, but with a white message window in the background. Note that you can move the windows on the screen around by clicking and dragging on the blue top or right borders. To bring a window to the front, try clicking on it.

7.2. Partition the harddisk(s)

The next thing to do is to partition the hard disk(s). Press the Partition drives button. Look at the white ouput screen. Oh no! A Horrible, Horrible error has happened! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??? Okay, no panic, we are going to sort this out in a second.

Press the right mouse button on the background on the screen. What a cute little menu! Notice that you can change the colors of the screen with the Styles option. This is the first installation program I've ever seen with changeable colors :-) !! Select xterm on the Blackbox (background) menu. This will bring up a command line terminal window which we will use to start some programs that can do what the installation program couldn't.

In the xterm window, issue the command

fdisk /dev/sda

This will start the good old fdisk program. Note: This program will wipe away anything on the disks in the machine. If there are something on the disks that you want to protect, exit the program by hitting Q and press Enter. If you like a menu driven program, we'll start using cfdisk in a minute. For an overview on the fdisk commands, hit ?. To view the present partition scheme, hit P. If there are lots of unknown AIX information there, hit D, and select 1, D again and 2, and continue all the way up to 5 to be sure all old AIX partitions are wiped away. Write the changes to the disk by hitting W, and quit the program by hitting Q. If there are no AIX partitions on the disks, just quit with the Q command. If you have more than one harddisk in the machine, use the commands fdisk /dev/sdb for the second harddisk, fdisk /dev/sdc for third and so on, and repeat the steps from the first disk.

You could of course use fdisk to make the new partitions too, but I prefer a more user friendly solution. At the shell prompt, type

cfdisk /dev/sda

To start the cfdisk program on the first harddisk. Change to sdb and sdc, and so on for more harddisks. Basic usage of cfdisk is outside the scope of this document, but I have written a little starter. You can read it in the Section 15.

You should have at least these partitions:

• A boot partition. It should be the first primary partition on one of the SCSI drives, preferably the first (this naming the partition to sda1). It must have type PReP boot (type 41), and must be large enough to hold a compressed Linux kernel image (zImage). Something like 5-10MB should do.

• A swap partition. It can be either a primary or a logical partition on any drive. Any size will do, but a guide may be twice the size of you physical RAM. I have 64MB RAM, so I have a swap partition on 128MB. Remember: This is only a guide.

• A system root partition. It can be either a primary or a logical partition, and it should be big enough to hold the main parts of the installation. You should write down the device (disk and partition number, like sda5, for example) for your system's root partition. You will need it later. The easy way is just to use the rest of the harddisk space for this. If you have several harddisks, big drives or special requirements on safety and other things, you should consider to make own partitions for /home, /usr, /usr/local, and other parts of the system. Details on this is outside the scope of this document, but there is a good discussion on this in the Linux Partition HOWTO.

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7.3. Continue installation

The next step is to select what partitions should be used where. Press the Select Partitions button. You'll get a list over all partitions on your hard disks. Edit mount points and select format on the partitions that you want to erase. You should NOT mount the PReP boot partition (probably sda1) nor any swap partition(s).

Press the Format and Mount button. The installation program will format and mount the partitions. Look for exciting error messages in the output window. If you have /usr on a separate partition, and the root partition is quite small because of that, you'll get an error message in a new window. Just ignore it, and close that window.

7.4. Select and install packages

A new window will pop up. Select packages after your own will. What packages should I select, you say. Oh, please! I have no idea how you're going to use the machine :-). Press Install. Congratulations. After some minutes (not to say hours, it feels like that, doesn't it?) the install will be complete.

7.5. Make a root password and exit

After your selected packages have been installed, you will be prompted for a root password. Select a good password, enter it (twice) and press the Set password button. Exit the installation program by pressing the Reboot button. The system will reboot.