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5. Boot the machine and start the installation program

5.1 Boot the machine

To boot the 7248, just insert the bootdisk and switch on the machine. Insert the installation CD at the PowerPC splash screen. If it won't boot off the floppy drive, check SMS settings (chapter 2), and try to force a floppy boot by pressing F5 (or F6) at the bootscreen while the check icons pop up in the bottom of the screen. After a while, the screen blanks out, and Linux will boot. At this point, you can shout a little "hooray" for yourself, if there are not too many in the room, and Tux, the Linux Penguin will show up in the upper left corner of the screen. Insert the ramdisk root floppy and ramdisk floppy #2 when prompted.

After some seconds, the installation program will complain about a lot of things. It can't find a usb mouse, it can't start the Xpmac X-server, it can't open the local display, and that kind of things. Don't worry, we'll take care of this in a minute. Just press enter, and you'll be thrown to a standard root bash prompt. For those of us who have used Unix systems earlier, this is enough to give good vibrations. For all others: Don't Panic (TM). If, of some reason, the good old familiar (for some of us) RedHat installer program should start up, just press Control+Z to get a shell prompt. The Red Hat Installation program will not work.

5.2 Make some hacks

To be able to start the installation program, we have to change the standard PowerMac setup to something that is useable for the 7248. This is what we are going to do in this section. Remember that all commands are case sensitive.

First, let's set up the keyboard and mouse, to make them work correctly with X. (In more recent versions of LinuxPPC-2000, these commands may already been set up for you.) Issue these commands: 

     cd /etc/sysconfig
     mv mouse mouse.old
     mv mouse.PReP mouse
     rm -f /dev/mouse
     ln -s /dev/psaux /dev/mouse
     mv keyboard keyboard.old
     mv keyboard.PReP keyboard
Done! Now, that wasn't too difficult, was it? Let's continue with some X configuration. Issue these commands: 
     cd /etc
     mv XF86Config XF86Config.old
     mv XF86Config.PReP XF86Config
     rm -f /root/bin/X
     ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF68_FBDev /root/bin/X
According to Steve Cornett, later versions of LinuxPPC-2000 you have to run Xconfigurator to make this work. Try this if you can't start the installer as described below. 
     cp /etc/XF86Config.PReP /etc/X11/XF86Config
     Xconfigurator
Then Xconfigurator starts up, ans asks several questions. The answers are:
  1. Yes make the link
  2. Select your monitor
  3. Choose 8bit 1024x768
  4. Skip test (it will fail)
I have also got reports on some ramdisks where the default font path is not correctly set in the XFree86Config. You should check this. Edit the file with 
     vi /etc/X11/XF86Config
and look for the line which contains the FontPath. Just comment (put a `#` in front of) the line to use the default setting which should work.(So you don't like vi? Read this to get started.) You are now ready to start the installation program. Issue this command, and go for it: 
     start_installer
or with more recent versions of LinuxPPC-2000: 
     start_xinstaller
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