In this chapter I will try to help you through the steps of installing a Linux/APUS system. This is based on the RedHat/PPC system - if you want to install another package distribution or compile applications yourself, you are pretty much on your own. The only reason for describing how to install a RedHat/PPC system and not Debian is that RedHat/PPC seems to be (at the moment) the primary system used by Linux/PPC. By the way, RedHat/PPC is not coordinated by RedHat but by Linux/PPC developers.
It might be a good idea to read this entire chapter before you start downloading anything - so you know what is required for what you want to do.
If you don't know how to do some of the things mentioned here (or are unclear about something) you should get an install help text. You should be able to find several by looking for links at www.linux-m68k.org.
If you have corrections, additions or comments to this, please let me know. Your feedback is important for this chapter since new users (after you there may be others coming this way, you know!) will probably try to follow this - any misinformation or errors no matter how trivial should be corrected.
You need to get files from the following: the 'misc' directory at SunSITE Denmark, the RedHat 'install' directory at SunSITE Denmark, the 'boothack' directory at SunSITE Denmark, and the '2.2.x' directory at SunSITE Denmark.
You should get the following files (leave them in the same directory):
misc/kernel-options.txt
misc/ramdisk.image.gz [1]
boothack/bhYYMMDD.lha
2.2.x/vmapus-YYMMDD.lzh
install/redhat/apus-rh-ramdiskimageYYMMDD.gz
Unpack the archives (the version of lha I use under Linux appends the suffix .lzh and I'm bound to forget renaming them to .lha - so I don't):
lha x bhYYMMDD.lha lha x vmapus-YYMMDD.lzh |
Leave the ram disk compressed, or it will not be usable.
| [1] | The ramdisk.image.gz is primarily used to test that Linux/APUS actually boots. If you know it boots, don't bother downloading it. |