3. Get the installation files

3.1 Buying a CD

The easiest way to get all the files you need is perhaps just to buy an official CD. You may order the CD directly from http://order.linuxppc.com or you may try to find a local reseller, linuxppc.com has a list here.

3.2 Download from FTP

The other way around is to download a preformatted CD image. and burn it out yourself. I have no pointers to such images. If you know any, please send me a mail and tell me about it.

The third way around is to download all the files you need, and burn them to a CD, or place them on a hard disk you may put into the machine afterwards. (Remember that the 7248-133 supports both IDE and SCSI disks.)

For ftp download, just go to ftp://ftp.linuxppc.org/MIRRORS and find the closest mirror. From that mirror you should make you personal copy of the linuxppc-1999 tree, according to these rules:

If you want to make a CD, the sum of all files may not exceed 650MB, or whatever your CD's and CD burning software's limits are.

Much of the files in the tree are symbolic links. You should therefore not use recursive downloads unless you are shure that it copies the real file, and not just the link.

Do NOT download the software directory tree. What you want is the RedHat directory tree. At the ftp mirrors, many of the files in the RedHat directory are all symbolic links into the software directory. As stated, we do not want the links, but the files that the links point to. So if you download the files in the software directory, you get two sets of the same files.

Do not download the kernels directory nor the ANS, BlueG3, BootX, MacOS.utils, mklinux, old and test directories in the install directory tree. You won't need them for this platform.

For a basic install, you won't need the sources, updates and security directory trees. When your system is up, you should probably download and install some of the packages there though.

You should copy all the files not mentioned specially here. Remember that the directory tree layout must be preserved, so you might have to make a lot of directories manually while downloading.

After downloading, your CD tree should look (at least) something like this:

|
+- > README.txt
+- > UPGRADE.NOTES.IMPORTANT.txt
+- > install/
|      |
|      +- > README
|      +- > README.txt
|      +- > ramdisk.image.gz
|      +- > PREP-CHRP-BeBox/
|      |            |
|      |            +- > various boot images
|      +- > maps/
|             |
|             +------- > various .master filer
+- > RedHat/
      |
      +- > debug.log
      +- > ppc
      +- > redhat.image.gz
      +- > RPMS/
      |      |
      |      +-- > all installation packages
      |    
      +- > base/
      |     |
      |     +--- > scripts for the installer
      |    
      +- > cksums/
      |      |
      |      +-- > SRPMS.cksum
      |      +-- > SRPMS.md5sum 
      |    
      +- > instimage/
              |
              +- > lib/
              |     |
              |     +----- > libraries used during installation
              |
              +- > bin/
              |     |
              |     +----- > binaries used during installation              
              |
              +- > etc
                    |
                    +----- > install2.tr

To make a CD, you need some CD burning software package. This is outside the scope of this document. You should use something that supports rockridge extentions though. I use mkisofs (included in most unix and linux distribtutions) to create a CD image, and burn images on an NT box (of all things) at work. It works great. - And since a lot of you have asked, this is how I do it: Just cd to the root of the downloaded CD tree, and issue the command

      mkisofs -v -R -T -J -V "linuxppc-99"  -o /tmp/linuxppc-99.iso .

(Remember the trailing dot.) This works on my Red Hat 6.1 i386 system with mkisofs version 1.12b5-5, and puts the CD iso image file linuxppc-99.iso in the /tmp directory.

If you have a spare hard disk SCCSI or IDE, you may mount it on another machine, download the files directly to it, unmount it, put it into the the 7248-133, and run the installation from it, without burning a CD. Just remember that a CD may become handy later on, and that hardisk space is just something that you allways will run short of. Also remember that the filesystem best supported under Linux is the ext2 file system, so the filesystem on the hard disk should probably be ext2.

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