Copyright (C) 2000 Ingvar Hagelund,
Ringshusveien 10, N-1176 OSLO, NORWAY
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"Linux" is a registrated trademark owned by Linus Torvalds. "IBM" and "RS/6000" are trademarks owned by IBM Corporation. "MS-DOS" is a trademark owned by Microsoft Corporation.
Updated: August 2. 2000
This document is made after own experiences on a 43P 7248-132. The things I did might or might not work for you. You are on your own risk. I take no responsibility whatsoever for any damage, loss or expenses because of something you might have done because this document said so. If you want to give me feedback on errors, typos, or anything that can make this document better, please feel free to contact me by sending an e-mail to ingvar@unik.no
This document is about installing linuxppc-2000 on the IBM RS/6000 43P, model 7248. The methods described in this document may or may not work on other machines or models. They may or may not work on other Linux distributions. Don't ask me about this, as I have not tested others. Look at the resources page for other resources on this. If you find that these instructions work on other models or distributions, please let me know, and I'll add that info here.
Note that the 7248-132 and 43P-132 is two terms for the same model, and the same goes for 7248-133 and 43P-133. These four terms describes almost the exactly same model, with modifications so small, I have not been able to find them. You can safly assume that they are all the same machine.
If you are reading an offline version of this document, please note that the most up-to-date version can be found at http://www.ifi.uio.no/~ingvarha/43p
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snail-mail: Ingvar Hagelund, Ringshusveien 10, N-1176 OSLO,
NORWAY
The IBM RS/6000 43P model 7248-133 is a not extremely new PReP based PowerPC workstation which was produced from 1995 through 1997. The 43P series includes a lot of machines, both CHRP and PReP based. Our model has among other things this to offer:
Linux has now a native port to the PowerPC processor, and all official code is maintained in the main kernel tree. The main part of the port was done by Gary Thomas. The story of the port can be found here. For more information on running Linux on the PowerPC processor, check out the LinuxPPC homepage http://www.linuxppc.org.
The linuxppc-2000 distribution has no less than two installation programs included on the CD. Unfortunately, there are some bugs that we have to sort out to make them work. The first is the "native" linuxppc installer, made with a graphical user interface. We're going to use this method after some hacking to get it to work. The second is a text based simple installation. You may want to try it if nothing else works. The installer from the ncurses- and text based Red Hat installation program may also occure if you use old ramdisks. It's abandoned by LinuxPPC, and will not work with LinuxPPC-2000.
We are actually not going to change much. The only problem is that the X installer LinuxPPC has made is made to work on PowerMacs, and is therefore a little buggy on our dear 7248 box. So, we have to do some of the configuration manually. Don't despair, this document will lead you through it, step by step.