6. Boot the machine and start the installation program

In this chapter we will find out how to get the installation program up and running.

6.1. Boot the machine

To boot the 7248, just insert the bootdisk and switch on the machine. Insert the installation CD at the PowerPC splash screen. If it won't boot off the floppy drive, check SMS settings (Section 3), and try to force a floppy boot by pressing F5 (or F6) at the bootscreen while the check icons pop up in the bottom of the screen. After a while, the screen blanks out, and Linux will boot. At this point, you can shout a little "hooray" for yourself, if there are not too many in the room, and Tux, the Linux Penguin will show up in the upper left corner of the screen. Insert the ramdisk root floppy and ramdisk floppy #2 when prompted.

After some seconds, the installation program will complain about a lot of things. It can't find a usb mouse, it can't start the Xpmac X-server, it can't open the local display, and that kind of things. Don't worry, we'll take care of this in a minute. Just press enter, and you'll be thrown to a standard root bash prompt. For those of us who have used Unix systems earlier, this is enough to give good vibrations. For all others: Don't Panic (TM). If, of some reason, the good old familiar (for some of us) RedHat installer program should start up, just press Control+Z to get a shell prompt. The Red Hat Installation program will not work.

6.2. Make some hacks

To be able to start the installation program, we have to change the standard PowerMac setup to something that is useable for the 7248. This is what we are going to do in this section. Remember that all commands are case sensitive.

First, let's set up the keyboard and mouse, to make them work correctly with X. Issue these commands:
cd /etc/sysconfig mv mouse mouse.old mv mouse.PReP mouse rm -f /dev/mouse ln -s /dev/psaux /dev/mouse mv keyboard keyboard.old mv keyboard.PReP keyboard
Done! Now, that wasn't too difficult, was it? Let's continue with some X configuration. Issue these commands:
cd /etc mv XF86Config XF86Config.old mv XF86Config.PReP XF86Config rm -f /root/bin/X ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF68_FBDev /root/bin/X
You are now ready to start the installation program. Issue this command, and go for it:
start_installer

I have got reports on some ramdisks where the default font path is not correctly set in the XFree86Config. If X dies with font error messages, try to edit the file with vi /etc/X11/XF86Config , and look for the line which contains the fontpath. It should be set to something /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ (So you don't like vi? Read this to get started.)