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 Post subject: Fedora 8 on Efika
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 11:19 am 
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Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:48 pm
Posts: 42
At rsync://bombadil.infradead.org/f8-efika there is a slightly updated install tree for Fedora 8 which should install correctly on Efika (with its original and only existing firmware).

It'll be a lot quicker to download if you start with a 'real' Fedora 8 tree and use that to get rsync started, of course.
You can burn it to a DVD or just do a network install.

The updated kernel there includes support for the FEC Ethernet, and that will be included in the next official kernel release for Fedora 8.

The updated support in the installer-related packages is being merged and should be in Fedora 9.

It would be great if people could test this -- on Pegasos as well as Efika, to make sure I didn't break Pegasos installs.

Please report bugs in Bugzilla not here if you want a timely and coherent response.

Installation instructions are at http://www.advogato.org/person/dwmw2/diary/174.html


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 11:41 am 
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Genesi

Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2004 1:39 am
Posts: 1422
Thanks David. We appreciate the platform support.

Hear ye! Hear ye! Who wants to give it a test drive?! We still have a bunch of Power.org t-shirts. We will ship you one for your bug-report/useful feedback that is provided to David. Please post it here.

R&B :)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 12:40 pm 
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Joined: Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:01 am
Posts: 187
I am a bit spooked with steps:
1 Run the FORTH script from /ppc/efika.forth. This fixes up a bunch of issues in the device-tree, and allows Linux to work correctly.
And
4 After the install finishes and you allow it to reboot, you need to make sure that it runs the efika.forth script at every boot. You do this by editing the nvramrc. Use the nvedit command in OpenFirmware, and add the following at the end of the script:
s" hd:0 /efika.forth" $boot
You exit the nvram script editor by hitting Ctrl-C, and then use the nvstore command to save it.
Are these steps needed? If so will it improve other linuxes as well or will it break them.

But first and for all what is an rsync:// and how do i download from there? It would be easier if an iso or netboot images were provided.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:48 pm 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
OK, rsync is running...

mvdhoning:
- it did not break openSUSE 10.3 when tested it :)
- you don't need to put into nvramrc, but it makes life easier
- you can burn it to a DVD once downloaded by rsync. Here is a sample command line (one, that I use right now):
Code:
rsync -avH --progress --delete rsync://bombadil.infradead.org/f8-efika/ f8
This creates an 'f8' subdirectory in the current directory, and downloads Fedora 8 for EFIKA to that directory.

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 4:20 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:48 pm
Posts: 42
Quote:
Code:
rsync -avH --progress --delete rsync://bombadil.infradead.org/f8-efika/ f8
This creates an 'f8' subdirectory in the current directory, and downloads Fedora 8 for EFIKA to that directory.
Indeed it does -- it downloads the whole of Fedora 8, again. You'd do a lot better to start in a directory which already has a copy of Fedora 8, and use rsync. Then it'll just update the bits which are new:
Code:
pmac /home/dwmw2/fedora8 $ ls -p
etc/ README-BURNING-ISOS-en_US.txt RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-rawhide
fedora.css RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test
GPL repodata/ RPM-GPG-KEY-rawhide
images/ repoview/ SRPMS/
media.repo RPM-GPG-KEY stylesheet-images/
Packages/ RPM-GPG-KEY-beta
ppc/ RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
pmac /home/dwmw2/fedora8 $ rsync -avz rsync://bombadil.infradead.org/f8-efika/ .
receiving file list ... done
./
.discinfo
.treeinfo
GPL
README-BURNING-ISOS-en_US.txt
RELEASE-NOTES-en_US.html
RPM-GPG-KEY
RPM-GPG-KEY-beta
RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-rawhide
RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test
RPM-GPG-KEY-rawhide
fedora.css
media.repo
Packages/
Packages/anaconda-11.3.0.50-2.efika.1.ppc.rpm
...


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 Post subject: Booting it.
PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 4:48 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:48 pm
Posts: 42
The easiest way to boot it seems to be to set up a TFTP server on the local network (it looks like it has to be local; I can't seem to get it to use a public TFTP server otherwise I'd just run one myself).

Then do something like the following, using the IP address of your own TFTP server, not mine. Note there are two boot commands:
Code:
ok boot eth:90.155.92.193 /efika.forth
Efika 5200B Device Tree Supplement 20071114
(c) 2007 Genesi USA, Inc.
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/ for support

Enabling AC97
Adding Clock Distribution Module
Adding Simple GPIO Module
Adding Wakeup GPIO Module
Adding Slice Timer 1
Adding General Purpose Timer 0
Adding General Purpose Timer 1
Adding General Purpose Timer 2
Adding General Purpose Timer 3
Adding General Purpose Timer 4
Adding General Purpose Timer 5
Adding General Purpose Timer 6
Adding General Purpose Timer 7
Adding Ethernet PHY
Adding SDRAM Controller
Adding XLB Arbiter
ok boot eth:90.155.92.193 /ppc32.img

zImage starting: loaded at 0x00300000 (sp: 0x017ffe90)
Allocating 0x48c6fc bytes for kernel ...
trying: 0x00d00000
OF version = 'EFIKA5K2,1.3'
...
NFS is probably the best install method to choose -- export the install tree by NFS from whatever machine you rsynced it to, and then point the installer at it. FTP and HTTP should probably work too, but will take a lot more memory and be a lot slower.

Known bugs so far, so you don't bother to report these:

1. Sound is unsupported. We'll look at adding that soon.
2. If the cat stands on the machine and knocks the VGA card out of its slot, the installer might crash.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:19 am 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
Quote:
Indeed it does -- it downloads the whole of Fedora 8, again. You'd do a lot better to start in a directory which already has a copy of Fedora 8, and use rsync. Then it'll just update the bits which are new:
I did not have Fedora downloaded, and I have a very strong suspicion, that mvdhoning also had to download from scratch :-)

Now I start installing...

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:41 am 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
efika.forth was loaded, but then I get:
Code:
ok boot hd:11 /yaboot/yaboot

Error, can't read config file
Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.13 (Red Hat 1.3.13-8.fc9
Enter "help" to get some basic usage information
boot:
Please wait, loading kernel...
\
Can't read Elf e_ident/e_type/e_machine info
boot:
I hope, that yaboot does not assume, that /boot is /dev/sda1 :)

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 8:56 am 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
OK, I successfully booted FC8 on my EFIKA. The little trick was that I used 'mkzimage' from openSUSE to create a bootable kernel :-)

GDM just started, eight hours after starting installation...

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:47 am 
Hi czp (and dwmw2) !
Why was it so long (8hours) ?
Is it the total installation time or did you have to do things in the middle ?

It could be interesting to update the Efika book with the Fedora 8 installation instructions but I don't have much time for a complete and tested tutorial as I did before.

I think the current http://www.advogato.org/person/dwmw2/diary/174.html page is a good start but it might need a few more explanations to be usable by any Efika owner (like how to run the FORTH script, how to use rsync...).

So if someone has the time to do a better explained tutorial of Fedora install (with screenshots), I will then update the Efika book to include that (with all the associated greetings ;-) )


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:11 am 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
Quote:
Hi czp (and dwmw2) !
Why was it so long (8hours) ?
Because it uses an extreme amount of RAM, or in the case of EFIKA: swap, which is very slow. It seems to me, that even 512MB of RAM would be too small for Fedora, but would probably speed things up. Applying security and other updates to the system with 'yum' took another three hours for the same reasons.
Quote:
Is it the total installation time or did you have to do things in the middle ?
This is total installation time, from booting the netboot image to the graphical login. In the beginning it took a few minutes to create partitions and select package groups, then it took about 7.5 hours to install packages using the local 100mbit network, then a few minutes to boot openSUSE and create a bootable kernel (yaboot does not work), and then another few minutes to boot and finish up installation.

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:45 am 
Well then, I guess this is not a very usable distro on an Efika :-(
I don't think many people will be enough patient to wait 8 hours for an install (which may fail in some cases)...
Too bad :-(


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:41 am 
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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:41 am
Posts: 1066
Well, people say, that I'm patient to the extremes :-) The distro itself was easy and straightforward to install (actually too easy for my taste :-) ) without any problems (except for the yaboot trouble). I do not really care, how long an installation takes, as usually it is a one time event for months or years (except if someone test installers :-) ). But I deleted Fedora as soon as I realized, that regular maintenance also needs an extreme amount of time. The window of the graphical updater front end did not appear in one straight hour, and EFIKA was working continuously at 100%. 'yum', a console application needed a bit over three hours...

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http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:10 pm 
really too bad, because on Pegasos that distro was really easy (maybe the most easy) to install...
Anyway, maybe I could write a few words about it into the Efika book. Don't know if this is really interesting :/ What do you think ?


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