You can get precompiled Debian/PPC DEB packages from www.debian.org (see Chapter 12) or its mirrors. Currently no PowerPC version of the Debian CD distribution exists.
Text by Michel Dänzer
First of all, be aware that installing Debian is quite a bit harder at the moment than installing RedHat/PPC. I mention this so nobody downloads lots of stuff and then has to give up frustrated. There is no CD-ROM release until now, the guys at Debian/PPC want to wait until it's virtually equal to the i386 DEB. However, if you've got the time and will to experiment a little, give it a go! You won't be deceived :-)
Please read all the instructions carefully before you start.
You need to have an empty ext2 partition, which will be the root partition. You will probably need a swap partition and maybe others as well. It's up to you how you arrange things. You might want to read the section called Preparing Partitions first.
Get a base tarball. I have uploaded one to sunsite, it should be in the Debian 'install' directory at SunSITE Denmark. Get the rd-deb-install.gz ramdisk there. You might want to download or at least look at the other files there as well.
Unpack the base tarball. I'll quickly describe how to do this with the rd-deb-install.gz.
Boot the ramdisk. Init will ask you to enter the runlevel, type 'S' and press enter there. Now you'll see a rather ugly prompt, however, it's bash, so you have all the commodities like command history etc. Format the root partition (I call it /dev/sda2 here because that's my root partition at home; replace it with your root partition):
mke2fs /dev/sda2 |
Mount the soon-to-be root partition at /mnt/root:
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda2 /mnt/root |
Mount the Amiga partition containing the base tarball at /mnt/amiga (Again, replace /dev/sda4 with your partition ;):
mount -t affs /dev/sda4 /mnt/amiga |
CD to the base tarball's directory and unpack it with:
tar xvzpf base2_1.2.0.11.4_1998-10-15.tgz -C /mnt/root |
The p switch is vital, it sets all permissions correctly.
Remove the unconfigured.sh script which would prevent the thing from booting (Note: if you're unlucky and have the first version of rd-deb-install.gz, you will have to use /mnt/root/bin/rm):
rm /mnt/root/sbin/unconfigured.sh |
You need to create /mnt/root/etc/fstab, or else init won't be able to mount the filesystems at boot time. You can use joe to do that:
joe /mnt/root/etc/fstab |
Press CTRL-K and then H for help. CTRL-K X to save the file.
FIXME: Unfortunately, there is no template fstab in this base tarball anymore. If you don't know how to set it up, refer to other FAQs (I would be glad if someone could add an example here - or maybe I'll do it sometime :).
Now you're set for a first boot into your shiny new Debian root partition! Remember to unmount all filesystems before rebooting.
umount /mnt/root umount /mnt/amiga |
It should boot right through to the login screen. You must login as root.
Now you can start installing additional packages. All the needed stuff like pppd, ftp, etc. is there, so the main problem remaining is probably setting up pppd. Try pppconfig, a tool for that purpose with a User Interface. If that doesn't work, bad luck, check out the PPP-Howto at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO.html
Once this works, dselect can download the packages you want automatically via FTP. Just choose FTP as the installation method. The main server is ftp.debian.org, but you'll probably prefer a mirror close to you. Read http://www.debian.org/misc/README.mirrors for a list. There's also a mirror at SunSITE Denmark in /mirrors/ftp.debian.org. The distribution directories are debian/dists/unstable/main and optionally debian/dists/unstable/contrib and debian/dists/unstable/non-free. The location of the non-us files varies from mirror to mirror.
You should update the libc and libstdc++ packages ASAP. This may break some packages, just update them to the latest version. E.g. you'll probably have to update the dpkg and tar packages.
Congratulations, you should be using Debian/PPC! ;-)
Unfortunately, you can't get X to work with the packages from the official FTP archive. Try the packages Sven built for you in the 'DEB-APUS' directory at SunSITE Denmark. You need at least the xbase, xbase-clients, xfonts-base, xlib6g, xserver-common, xserver-fbdev and xterm packages. Install them directly with dpkg:
dpkg -i <path to the files>x*.deb |
You also need a window manager; twm in the 'DEB-APUS' directory at SunSITE Denmark is a very simple one to start, there are lots in the official archive.