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Michael Roeder
April, 2001. Updated August, 2004
Introduction
This document will guide you through the steps of installing Yellow Dog
Linux 3.0 on a Macintosh 6100 using the MkLinux booter and a kernel specially
developed for NuBus PPC Macintosh computers. It is intended for those
with a little experience in Linux and a lot of experience in computers.
It has only been tested specifically with 6100s but ought to work for
other Macs as well. If some of the instructions sound superstitious, that’s
because I fiddled with stuff and tried combinations until I found ones
that work. There may even be technical reasons to do things certain ways… Please
send me feedback for corrections or clarifications.
Okease see the SourceForge
NuBus-PowerMac project. Please join the Linux
on PowerPC Mail List.
Yellow Dog have released YDL 3.0.
The installer kernel for YDL 3.0 has been posted.
I have not performed this installation, so I don't know the ins and outs.
Required Hardware
- Any of Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, 8100; Performa 5200, 6200, 6300;
PowerBook 1400, 2300, 5300: more recent is beside the point. I used
6100s, which is why I refer to a 6100 in this document.
- Minimum 500MB hard drive: more is better.
- Minimum 40MB RAM (4MB built-in + two 16MB SIMMs) 40MB works; more
is better.
- CD-ROM drive
- Ethernet connection
- Another Mac running Mac OS 7–9 with AppleShare file sharing and
a reliable Internet connection on the same local network. OS X only
does AppleShare over TCP, and Mac OS 7.5 does not, so they won't talk
to each other.
Required Software
Tremendously Useful to Have
If you have another Mac on the network, share a folder on it. Put the
MkLinux system fiddly bits and the two kernels in that folder. I do this
with four folders:
- The folder “For Control Panel” contains the MkLinux setup
application.
- The folder “For Extensions” contains the MKLinux extension
and the Mach Kernel that has the YDL installer.
- The folder “For Preferences” contains the two preferences
files.
- The folder “Replace Extension” contains the latest Mach
Kernel that runs on Nubus Macs.
(The reason I went to all that trouble is that I set up a bunch of 6100s
for a Beowulf cluster.)
1. Partition your Hard Drive
Boot the 6100 with the Apple 7.1 CD that shipped with the Mac, a 7.5
CD, or an 8.0 CD.
Open the Utilities folder, then open Apple HD SC Setup. Click the Drive
button until the disk you want to use is selected. Click Initialize to
get rid of all the existing partitions. Click Partition, then Custon.
Delete the big Mac partition, then create at least these partitions:
- Mac OS: 25MB (25600kB)
- A/UX Swap Slice 1: 3x your physical RAM size. (For 40MB physical
RAM, that means 120MB swap space, or 122880kB.)
- A/UX Root&Usr Slice 0: Everything else. (On my ~500MB drive,
that left me with ~380MB, enough to install Linux and have a coupla
hundred MB free.
If you have two hard drives, say the 500MB drive that came with the 6100
and a second 1GB drive, a simple partitioning scheme that works is to
make the Apple drive contain the / and swap partitions and let the big
one contain the /usr partition. Use the Apple tool to parittion the disks.
The installer's tools apparently has problems.
2. Install Mac OS
Install Mac OS onto the small partition. You want a couple of MB free
for the MkLinux booter and the Linux kernel. System 7.1 and 7.5 leave
plenty of room with a basic install. OS 8 takes up a lot of room and needs
extra fiddling to get it small enough. 7.5 is ideal because it supports
TCP/IP without a lot of fiddling about and was available from Apple’s
web site for free.
If you’re installing System 7.1 or 7.5, then you can do an Easy
Install.
If you’re installing Mac OS 8, then install a minimal system and
manually choose the packages you want:
- CD-ROM
- Open Transport
- AppleTalk
- File Sharing
- Memory control panel
- Monitors control panel
Throw away all the cruft that the installer leaves behind such as help
files and the Audio CD Player DA.
Reboot with the new Mac OS.
3. Install YDL Linux
BootX doesn’t work. These instructions use the MkLinux booter.
- With the Network or AppleTalk control panel, set the Mac to use Ethernet.
- With the chooser, make a connection to your other Mac. If you set
that one up to do file sharing, then you can download all the Mac kernels
on that one and transfer them to the Linux Mac. This lets you spend
as little disk space on the Mac OS as possible.
- With the Memory control panel, turn off virtual memory.
- Install the MkLinux booter. In the
System Folder...
- Put
lilo.conf and MkLinux prefs into System
Folder:Preferences.
- Put
MkLinux Booter in System Folder:Extensions.
- Put
MkLinux in System Folder:Control Panels.
- Put the kernel with the YellowDog Linux installer in
System
Folder:Extensions.
- Rename the kernel to “
Mach Kernel.” (Whatever
kernel you use, you always name it “Mach Kernel”
and put it in the Extensions folder.)
- Reboot the Mac. As part of the Mac boot process, a dialog box will
come up asking if you want to boot into Mac OS or Linux. Choose Linux.
You will get a screenful of text and eventually the Red Hat installer.
If you have the Yellow Dog disk or the Red Hat Unleashed book, then
you will have instructions on how to install Linux. Use Fdisk, not Disk
Druid.
- X seems to work better if you install both KDE and Gnome. (My Gnome-only
instllation broke. I reinstalled from scratch and selected KDE as well
as Gnome and everything worked fine.)
- After it has installed all the packages, there will be a window that
says ‘An error occurred during setup “Configure Mouse”
of the install.’ Select “Menu.” Go through each of the
items one by one, skipping the mouse item. The items you need
to do are...
- Networking
- Time Zone
- Services
- Root Password
- Install Bootloader - write down the modification you need to make
to the lilo.conf file.
- Configure X
- Exit Install
Then go back to the top of the list and do Continue Install.
- It finishes and puts “Complete” in upper right corner of
the screen. At this point you can reboot. Sometimes it breaks in this
step. It seems to help to let it rest for a few minutes before rebooting.
- When you’re done, reboot the Mac. When the MkLinux dialog box
comes up, choose Macintosh.
- Replace the kernel with the stable one.
- Throw the old
System Folder:Extensions:Mach Kernel
file away
- Copy the stable one from your Mac OS Mac to
System Folder:Extensions
- Rename it
Mach Kernel.
- Edit the lilo.conf file
- Change the line
rootdev=/dev/sdb5
to what the step Install Bootloader told you in step 8 above. (sd
means scsi disk. In this example, b means the second scsi device
[by scsi device number] on the bus and 5 means the 5th partition
on that device.)
- Uncomment the line
mach_options= video=ariel2fb:
- Reboot the Mac and let it boot into Linux.
If everything went well with the install, then you should eventually
get to a Linux prompt. If you’re building a command-line system,
then you’re done.
4. Configure X Windows.
Reboot. Select MkLinux. You should see the usual Linux startup stuff
followed by a Linux prompt.
Once you have a usable command line going, you need to do a few Linux
administration chores.
Add the CD ROM to the fstab.
Append the line
/dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
to the file /etc/fstab. Sometimes the existing line with
/dev/cdrom works fine. If so, then just leave it.
Set the X mouse to the Apple Desktop Bus mouse.
#mouseconfig ADB
Warning: Do not run #mouseconfig all by itself with no parameters.
It will crash your computer. (Well, it did mine, anyway.) And do not
run this from inside the Yellow Dog install program. It will crash your
computer. (Well, it did mine, anyway.)
Mount the Yellow Dog installer CD ROM
Stick it in the drive, then issue the commands
#mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
#cd /mnt/cdrom/YellowDog/RPMS
Install the Mac X server.
#rpm -i XFree86-Xpmac-.ppc.rpm
Install a missing font file.
#rpm -i XFree86-100dpi-fonts-3.3.6-11.2.ppc.rpm
Create a symbolic link.
#cd /usr/X11R6/bin
#rm XF68_FBDev
#ln -s Xpmac XF68_FBDev
so that when Xconfigurator looks for XF86_FBDev it uses Xpmac. (Yes,
that’s 68, not 86 in the ln command.)
Run the X configurator.
#Xconfigurator
If you want to change resolution/depth from Linux, use fbset. If it’s
not installed, do “yup install fbset” and “man
fbset.” For example, “fbset -xres 832 -yres 624
-depth 8” should change the resolution/depth to 832x624-8bit.
If this doesn’t work, check that ariel2fb is being used. “cat
/proc/fb” should show “0 ariel2fb.” Remember that
the 6100 is not capable of 1024x768, only 832x624 or 800x600 depending
on your monitor.
5. Start X Windows.
#startx
If all works right, you will have a workable X system. If X ever does
anything seriously unhappy, press command-F1. This will kill X and give
you some debug messages. You might be able to make sense of them and
reinstall the missing bits.
Once you’ve got X working correctly, you may want your Linux box
to boot into X by default. Eit the file /etc/inittab. Change
the line
id:3:initdefault:
so that it reads
id:5:initdefault:
Some dark and quiet night, run
#yup update
and let it update all your packages to the latest ones. This will take
forever. If you’re on a cable modem, please let us know whether
your neighbors actually paper your yard for hogging all that bandwidth.
More information on yup can be found at Yellow
Dog Linux.
Useful Unix Commands
ifconfig - sets up ethernet interfaces
route - sets up routes for ethernet interfaces
ipfwadm - sets up ip forwarding (if you are building a firewall)
netcfg - once you have X working, this makes setting up networking
easy.
tcpdump - spies on network packets your network card receives.
Xconfigurator - sets basic X operating characteristics.
netstat -i
arp -a
dmesg - shows boot messages
df - lists all the mounted volumes and their sizes
Useful Unix Files
/etc/inittab - contains the runlevel: 3 for command line, 5
for X.
/var/log/messages - contains all that stuff that appeared on
the screen that you couldn’t read as it booted up.
/etc/lilo.conf - does not exist in LinuxPPC for Macintosh. Look
for it in the Mac OS disk in System Folder:Preferences: lilo.conf.
/etc/resolv.conf - local file for domain name lookup; points
to name server.
References
Linux PPC
for NuBus Power Macs
Linux
on PPC-Nubux Mailing List Please direct questions to the
list, not to me. I haven’t been playing with this project in a
while.
Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed by SAMS
MkLinux by Rich Morin
Power Mac 6100 Upgrade Guide
Acknowledgements
Matthew Duhan - for giving the crucial details in how to really
do the install. His instructions are the core of these instructions.
But please don’t take him to task for any errors here.
Takashi Oe - for building the Linux/Nubus kernels, and for spending
a Saturday night telnetting into my 6100 to build a special kernel so
my Asante ethernet card will work in the Beowulf
cluster I’m building.
Want your name here? Find an error or a place where these instructions
could be improved, and email me.
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