I guess with the recent server crash, my thread asking about linux (debian) on pegasos1 went missing.

So here I am asking again. Anyone who has installed linux sucessfully on peg1 perhaps can post here and tell me the secret to how they got linux installed on the peg1.

Installation from either the CDs sven sent me (and the recent netinstall iso downloaded from his site) seem to go fine, what I get stuck on is copying the kernel from the installed partition to the FFS partition where the other boot.img's reside.

The readme for the pegasos1 states that during the installation to drop to a shell by pressing alt-f2, type in some commands to make an FFS partition then type this..

# mkdir /boot
# mount -t affs /dev/ide/host0/target0/lun0/part1 /boot
# cp /target/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-powerpc /boot
# umount /boot

For whatever reason, this never works and I get errors such as 'file or directory not found'.


Its a shame that a utility or script to copy the kernel from the install to the FFS partition wasn't included.

The OF in the peg1 seems to be only able to recognise FFS partitions, although I've seen mention of it possibly being able to read FAT partitions.

What do you see if you type:
ls /

Or, did you TAB this line:
/target/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-powerpc

Also type df to see if you really mounted /boot.

i suppose you haven't got time to read the answers we gave you before the server crash.

you'd better use ext2Filesystem and mount your linux partition under MorphOS. So you'll be able to copy your kernel into your FFS boot partition and boot on it. I can't think of anything easier.

First of all check if /boot already exists. the kernel might be already there and when you mounting /dev/hda1 to it you automatically see only files on /dev/hda1.
Try this

mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/boot -t affs

and then if your /boot contains the kernel then
cp vmlinuz-(I dunno the version)-powerpc /mnt/boot
else
cp /target/boot/vmlinuz-(I dunno the version)-powerpc /mnt/boot

umount /mnt/boot

You should place the correct version instead (I dunno the version) line.

OK, I figured out that it helps if you manually partition the hard drive and ensure that a / and a /boot partition are set up.

So I did get linux *partially* installed and was able to cp the kernel intl the FFS partition.

Now I need to figure out how to fix the broken installation, if it can be done without just formatting, repartitioning and re-installing yet again.

Compared to Windows and morphos, linux is the most difficult operating system I have ever attempted to install.

maybe an extra /boot isn't needed, as the FFS partition is already /boot

OK, with partitions set up, installation goes fine, the kernel gets copied to to the FFS partition manually, but when I reboot and continue the installation I keep getting 'packages fail' when I use the DVD-Rs sent to me :/

argh!

I can however log into root or my user. Maybe I can try to download the packages?


So maybe aptitude can be used, but if I select something like KDE it says it will use 4.2GB of hard drive space.. hmmm! I probably don't want to install the whole thing then.



[ Edited by Darth_X on 2006/2/23 6:36 ]

Linux is hard for any novice who doesn't read documentation or
choose a distro with bad documentation written. I can't say
Debian is a good distro if you need documentation on how to
set up your Pegasos. The Gentoo installation is however very
easy - follow the Gentoo PPC Installation Handbook. Every
Pegasos-specific actions are there aswell.

Someone should really make some documentation for Debian
and Ubuntu since they are quite popular Pegasos-distros..

whew! It took a long time to figure things out, and a lot of blind guesses (I know I should have read ALL the documentation in the first place, but that would have taken hours in itself!) but I have eventually got linux installed. Its not a perfect install and I will probably have to fix things, but for the most part I have a xfce running some apps. nice!

Hi,
I managed to install debian with the peg1-bootCD.
What I don't like is, that everything gets downloaded from inet.
Is there some way to offline-install with this CD ?
bye

Hi,
I got Sarge installed on this A1 by setting the preferences in
etc/apt/sources.list

You use "apt-cdrom add" in bash to set this file. I had 14 CDs
to setup this way for an "apt-get update apt-get upgrade".

Snuffy

Yes. Good post

@Judas

You dont have to select all the packages for internet download. You can do just a base install and then apt-get whatever you ned. You can use deselect also do deselct apps that get installed. But this question is better suited to ppczone.org not morphzone.

magnetic