29 Nov 2007 dwmw2   » (Master)

At rsync://bombadil.infradead.org/f8-efika there is a slightly updated Fedora 8 tree which installs on Efika.

It contains a new kernel with support for the built-in Ethernet -- which used to be present in Fedora 7 but somehow got dropped before Fedora 8, although it should now be in the next official Fedora 8 kernel update.

It also contains a few installer-related changes which are in the process of going into the Rawhide development tree. And a fix for the moronic bug which broke PS3 installations at the last minute.

You can burn it all to DVD, or just burn the images/boot.iso and boot from that. Or if you don't have a USB CD/DVD drive for your Efika, you can do it all over the network with TFTP. If someone reminds me precisely how to do that, I might update this post -- or better still just put it straight in the Release Notes Wiki. Another option is just to copy the two files you need to a USB storage device and use them from there.

To install, proceed as follows:

  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.
  2. Boot the installer, by booting the "netboot" image from /images/netboot/ppc32.img.
  3. Go through the install as usual. (It'll run in text mode.)
  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.
  5. Finally, set the boot-device and boot-file environment variables in OpenFirmware so that it knows what to boot:
    ok setenv boot-device hd:0
    ok setenv boot-file /yaboot/yaboot

(That's assuming you used the default partitioning, with a separate /boot partition as the first partition. If you used a single ext3 partition and no LVM, which would be a sensible thing to do, then it might be 'hd:0 /boot/efika.forth' in step 4, and you might want to set boot-file to /boot/yaboot/yaboot instead. Use brain, or consult adult.)

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