8. Boot the machine

In this chapter we will boot our fresh installed system for the first time, and make some small custom changes to make it work as it should

You are done! If everything worked, you should now be able to reboot you're system, and start LinuxPPC-2000 for the first time. Reinsert the boot floppy disk in the floppy drive, and switch the machine on again. If it won't boot, try to hit F5 at the splash screen while the system check icons pop up in the bottom of the screen. At the boot prompt, ("Linux/PPC load:") you must add a boot parameter to make the system find your root partition. (That's usually the main system partition.) Press backspace to remove what's already there, and add something like this:

root=/dev/sda5 single

I use sda as sda5 is where I have installed my root partition, that is, the partition mounted at "/". You might have something different, and you should have written it down when you partitioned you harddisk(s). You did, didn't you? We can't boot into the main system yet, because it has not been set up correctly with keyboard and mouse. (Stupid, isn't it?) That's why we add the single keyword, which makes the system boot into maintenance mode.

If everything goes well, the machine will boot into single mode, and we'll be greeted with the now familiar shell prompt.

Before we start, let's check that your timezone is set correctly. Run

/usr/sbin/timeconfig

And if you're not located in the US, why not set up your keyboard as well. Run

/usr/sbin/kbdconfig

Now we are going to make some small changes to the X configuration file. Luckily, there is a nice program called Xconfigurator to do this for us. Issue the command

/usr/X11R6/bin/Xconfigurator

and follow the instructions on the screen. The usage of Xconfigurator is beyond the scope of this document, but it's quite easy. If you need help, try the Xconfigurator section in the Red Hat Installation guide. Xconfigurator should figure out that we use the IBM E15 frame buffer device. Note that the frame buffer device has only support for 256 colors, so only 8 bit mode should be selected.

After you have ran Xconfigurator, you should look over the configuration file, using a text editor like vi or pico. Try

pico /etc/X11/XF86Config

and scroll down to the Keyboard section. Check that you have settings that suits you. Edit as you wish, and press Control+X to save.

Next, you may find that the /dev/cdrom link is not working properly, it points to itself. It should point to /dev/scd0, so let's fix this. Issue these commands:

rm -f /dev/cdrom ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom

You should now be able to mount the cdrom using /dev/cdrom. Thanks to Thomas M. Nymand for this tip.

Now, you should be all ready. Issue the command

init 5

And you should continue booting into LinuxPPC-2000.

The system should boot up, and after a minute or so, greet you with a login prompt. Congratulations, you have installed LinuxPPC-2000 on your computer! From here, you have to know how to use linux. This is absolutely outside the scope of this document, but if you are a complete newbie, you could for example check out Linux Administration Made Easy by Steve Frampton, and start at chapter 6, since you've already got your system up.

The next time you power-cycle the box, you should be able to boot from the floppy, and then start the system directly, so the kernel arguments at the boot prompt ("Linux/PPC Load:") should be only something like this:

root=/dev/sda5

Where of course, you may have something different from sda5, according to where your root partition is.

This is the time to install the rest of the system, with all the packages that are on the software CD. Login as root, open a terminal window, insert the CD, and mount it like this:

mount -t HFS -o ro /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom

Then, start the gnorpm program to install packages.