Just a couple more questions!
Richard Schreyer
I should be getting my new drive tonight or tomorrow, and I just have a
couple more questions.
Since I learned that right now there is no real triple boot ability for my
beige G3, the Open Firmware patch in the LinuxPPC Install guide that allowed
a choice in which drive to boot interested me, but I'll start off by using
BootX for now. Do I want to use whatever BootX version that comes on the
LinuxPPC CD, or should I download and use the latest (1.2.2)?
Regarding formatting and partitioning of the drive: I want to use Drive
Setup since it is the most familiar to me, and since it can create A/UX
partitions, but I saw the support post on LinuxPPC.com mentioning that Drive
Setup 1.8.x will install drivers that are not supported by Linux. I guess I
can update the drivers with Drive Setup 1.7.x, but I want to know if this
has been fixed in the current set of CDs.
My added hardware: I will be removing my Voodoo2 PCI card until I can
install the Linux drivers, but I am still not sure if that is necessary with
my USB PCI card. It is OCHI standard (or whatever that is) and if LinuxPPC
can drive an iMacs USB slots, it should be able to drive this card as well,
but I'm not sure about that. Also, I'm using a USB Mouse and ADB keyboard.
Will using seperate connections for my mouse and keyboard cause any
problems?
Finally, how large should my main Linux drive be? It seems that 3 gigs
should be enough for the system and all the apps that i'll need.
Finally, I'll be trying to install the MacOS X Public Beta on this same
drive, and I've decided that I shouldn't be booting Classic from a system
that has BootX, so I've decided, since I have the space, I am going to have
two OS 9 installs, one minimal install optimised for Classic, and the other
Full OS 9 install that will contain BootX, and all of the hardware drivers
that would kill Classic. (Since I use a Voodoo2, I can't use it under X
anyway). This leaves me with 6 partitions on my new drive, Linux Root,
Linux Boot, Linux Swap, OS 9 System, OS X System, and the rest of my space
for holding my Mac files. Suddenly, my 30gig drive doesn't seem so large =)
Oh, would anyone recommend using the SuSE distro over LinuxPPC?
Thanks!
Richard Schreyer
** Sent via the linuxppc-user mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
Michael A. Peters
>I should be getting my new drive tonight or tomorrow, and I just have a
>couple more questions.
>
>Since I learned that right now there is no real triple boot ability for my
>beige G3, the Open Firmware patch in the LinuxPPC Install guide that allowed
>a choice in which drive to boot interested me, but I'll start off by using
>BootX for now. Do I want to use whatever BootX version that comes on the
>LinuxPPC CD, or should I download and use the latest (1.2.2)?
Use the latest.
>
>Regarding formatting and partitioning of the drive: I want to use Drive
>Setup since it is the most familiar to me, and since it can create A/UX
>partitions, but I saw the support post on LinuxPPC.com mentioning that Drive
>Setup 1.8.x will install drivers that are not supported by Linux. I guess I
>can update the drivers with Drive Setup 1.7.x, but I want to know if this
>has been fixed in the current set of CDs.
Drive Setup 1.7.3 is what I use, it doesn't make a/ux partitions- but
you can use it to make hfs partitions which I think you can convert
with the installer. I always use pdisk myself, but I *think* you can
turn hfs into svr2 with the installer.
>
>My added hardware: I will be removing my Voodoo2 PCI card until I can
>install the Linux drivers, but I am still not sure if that is necessary with
>my USB PCI card. It is OCHI standard (or whatever that is) and if LinuxPPC
>can drive an iMacs USB slots, it should be able to drive this card as well,
>but I'm not sure about that. Also, I'm using a USB Mouse and ADB keyboard.
>Will using seperate connections for my mouse and keyboard cause any
>problems?
Possibly. With LinuxPPC 1999 I had to disconnect the usb mouse from
my beige g3- 'cause when I didn't, the keytable was wrong for the adb
keyboard.
install with just adb, go to my Linux_pages site below, and get my
kernel- its rpm install and has a support for a whole slew of usb
devices. If you just want usb mouse, the LinuxPPC kernel will work
with that- but It may work better if you only have adb devices
attached when you install.
>
>Finally, how large should my main Linux drive be? It seems that 3 gigs
>should be enough for the system and all the apps that i'll need.
3 gigs is plenty for a base system, and you can always add an
external scsi later if its not.
>
>Finally, I'll be trying to install the MacOS X Public Beta on this same
>drive, and I've decided that I shouldn't be booting Classic from a system
>that has BootX, so I've decided, since I have the space, I am going to have
>two OS 9 installs, one minimal install optimised for Classic, and the other
>Full OS 9 install that will contain BootX, and all of the hardware drivers
>that would kill Classic. (Since I use a Voodoo2, I can't use it under X
>anyway). This leaves me with 6 partitions on my new drive, Linux Root,
>Linux Boot, Linux Swap, OS 9 System, OS X System, and the rest of my space
>for holding my Mac files. Suddenly, my 30gig drive doesn't seem so large =)
Linux Boot doesn't need to be a seperate partition. If you plan to
boot via miBoot you will need an hfs partition for that- but you can
keep /boot in your / partition.
>
>Oh, would anyone recommend using the SuSE distro over LinuxPPC?
I haven't tried SuSE yet, but I would recommend Yellow Dog over
LinuxPPC 2000 simply because there are less install bugs with YDL and
they create a sane /etc/fstab. YDL and LinuxPPC are both Red Hat
variants and are very similar, but from the differences, I'd choose
YD over LinuxPPC.
YDL also has yup, which (though it isn't perfect) allows easy
updating of the packages and even the kernel.
[root@wherever root]$ yup update
Couldn't be easier.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Michael A. Peters-- http://24.5.29.77/Linux_Pages/
http://www.omnilinux.com/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Brett Humphreys
>
> Finally, how large should my main Linux drive be? It seems that 3 gigs
> should be enough for the system and all the apps that i'll need.
>
here is what i would do. don't make one partition. You'll run into
trouble. What you want to do is make the following partitions:
/ -- .5 gig
/usr -- 1 gig
/usr/local - 1 gig
/home - .5 gig
You can always add. that might be too much for just /usr , maybe
only .5, but here is why. See if unix uses the idea of iNodes in the hard
drive. Each partition will have x amount of inodes (1 3 gig partition = x
inodes; 3 1 gig partitions = x inodes) AFAIK, each file needs 1 i node. So
on a 3 gig poarition, you may only have 1 gig used up, but if you have too
many files, you will not be able to create any new files, b/c you've run out
of inodes.
I'm by no means an expert in this, anyone else wanna help me out here?
But i would definetly partition, why? b/c i ran into this problem befor with
my 1 2.5 gig partition :)
the reason for such a big /usr/local, is b/c that is where i install
everthhing or most things i should say. So that is what will grow the most
after your sys is up and running. It may seem small at first, but after a
while, it will grow more than other folders.
HTH
-brett
Richard Schreyer
>>
>> I saw miBoot on the site but didn't know what it was for. What's the
>> difference between miBoot and BootX? The LinuxPPC install guide for Old
>> World ROMs did say to have a seperate boot drive :/ This is getting
>> confusing.
>
> The LinuxPPC guide is wrong in a few places.
> miBoot is a fake system folder- you edit the fake system file with
> resedit and put in your boot options. Its not terribly useful for
> dualbooting between Mac OS and Linux, though, so you are probably
> better off with BootX
>
Your right, after reading through the docs again I see that now... So,
guess all I need is maybe a 2-3 gig main linux partition, and a 128 meg
swap. Cool. I had too many partitions anyway =)
I've got the LinuxPPC full image downloading now, and I'll be printing the
install manual later tonight. Almost there! (:
Richard Schreyer
pangaea
If you want you can boot off of any drive, by doing it the hard way. that is by
booting directly into OF:
<command>+<option>+o+f
on startup and when you get the OF prompt usualy '0>' type:
dev / ls
to get a listing of devices then find the device you want to boot from and
type:
boot <device>
I don't recomend it for long term use in booting, but it can come in handy for
testing.
check out the OF section of the MK/LPPC FAQ (sorry don't have the link handy
but its easy to find) and check out some of the tutorials at apple's site.
kiran