1.  Hardware Requirements

Introduction

Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to successfully install Gentoo on your machine.

Hardware Requirements

Be sure to read the Gentoo PPC FAQ for help with some common installation related issues or if you're unsure as to just what's in that PowerPC machine you've got sitting on your desk right now.

1.  The Gentoo Universal Installation CD

Introduction

Gentoo Linux can be installed using a stage3 tarball file. Such a tarball is an archive that contains a minimal environment from which you can succesfully install Gentoo Linux onto your system.

Installations using a stage1 or stage2 tarball file are not documented in the Gentoo Handbook - please read the Gentoo FAQ on these matters.

Gentoo Universal Installation CD

An Installation CD is a bootable medium which contains a self-sustained Gentoo environment. It allows you to boot Linux from the CD. During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers are loaded. The Gentoo Installation CDs are maintained by Gentoo developers.

There currently are two Installation CDs available:

• The Universal Installation CD contains everything you need to install Gentoo. It provides stage3 files for common architectures, source code for the extra applications you need to choose from and, of course, the installation instructions for your architecture.
• The Minimal Installation CD contains only a minimal environment that allows you to boot up and configure your network so you can connect to the Internet. It does not contain any additional files and cannot be used during the current installation approach.

Gentoo also provides a Package CD. This is not an Installation CD but an additional resource that you can exploit during the installation of your Gentoo system. It contains prebuilt packages (also known as the GRP set) that allow you to easily and quickly install additional applications (such as OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, ...) immediately after the Gentoo installation and right before you update your Portage tree.

The use of the Package CD is covered later in this document.

Choosing a userland

On 64-bit PowerPC machines, the kernel is 64-bit and the userland can be either 32-bit or 64-bit. The userland can best be described as the applications that you are running, such as bash or mozilla-firefox. They can be compiled and run in either 64-bit or 32-bit mode. The Gentoo/PowerPC team provides both 32-bit and 64-bit userlands, so which one should you use?

You may have heard that 64-bit applications are better, but in fact, 32-bit applications take up slightly less memory and often run a little bit faster than 64-bit applications.

64-bit applications should really only be used when more memory is required than a 32-bit userland allows, or if you do a lot of 64-bit number crunching. If you run applications that require more than 4GB of memory or you run scientific applications, you should choose the 64-bit userland. Otherwise, choose the 32-bit userland, as it is recommended by the Gentoo/PowerPC developers.

Additionally, the 32-bit userland has been available in Portage longer than the 64-bit userland has. This means that there are more applications tested in the 32-bit userland that just work "out of the box." Many applications compiled for the 64-bit userland may be just as stable as the 32-bit versions, but they haven't been tested yet. Though testing isn't difficult to do, it can be annoying and time consuming if you want to use many untested 64-bit applications. Also, some programs just won't run in the 64-bit userland until their code has been fixed, such as OpenOffice.

The Gentoo/PowerPC team provides stages and package CDs for both 32-bit and 64-bit userlands, so no matter which one you choose, you'll be able to successfully install Gentoo and get a full system up and running with minimal fuss.

1.  Download, Burn and Boot the Gentoo Universal Installation CD

Downloading and Burning the Installation CD

You can download the Universal Installation CD (and, if you want to, the Packages CD as well) from one of our mirrors. The Installation CDs are located in the ${release-dir}installcd directory; the Package CDs are located in the ${release-dir}packagecd directory.

Inside those directories you'll find ISO files. Those are full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.

After downloading the file, you can verify its integrity to see if it is corrupted or not:

• You can check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (for instance with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5sum for Windows). Verifying MD5 checksums with Mac OS X is described in the Gentoo PPC FAQ.
• You can verify the cryptographic signature that we provide. You need to obtain the public key we use (0x17072058) before you proceed though.

To fetch our public key using the GnuPG application, run the following command:

$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x17072058

Now verify the signature:

$ gpg --verify <signature file> <downloaded iso>

To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss cdrecord and K3B here; more information can be found in our Gentoo FAQ.

• With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc <downloaded iso file> (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path).
• With K3B, select Tools > Burn CD Image. Then you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.

Default: Booting the Installation CD with Yaboot

On NewWorld machines place the Installation CD in the CD-ROM and reboot the system. When the system-start-bell sounds, simply hold down the 'C' until the CD loads.

After the Installation CD loaded, you will be greeted by a friendly welcome message and a boot: prompt at the bottom of the screen.

We provide one generic kernel, apple. This kernel is built with support for multiple CPUs, but it will boot on single processor machines as well.

You can tweak some kernel options at this prompt. The following table lists some of the available boot options you can add:

To use the above options, at the boot: prompt, type apple followed by the desired option. In the example below, we'll force the kernel to use the Open Firmware framebuffer instead of the device specific driver.

boot: apple video=ofonly

If you don't need to add any options, just hit enter at this prompt, and a complete Gentoo Linux environment will be loaded from the CD. Continue with And When You're Booted....

Alternative: Booting the Installation CD on a Pegasos

On the Pegasos simply insert the CD and at the SmartFirmware boot-prompt type boot cd /boot/menu. This will open a small bootmenu where you can choose between several preconfigured video configs. If you need any special boot options you can append them to the command-line just like with Yaboot above. For example: boot cd /boot/pegasos video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75 mem=256M. The default kernel options (in case something goes wrong and you need it) are preconfigured with console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 init=/linuxrc looptype=squashfs loop=/image.squashfs cdroot root=/dev/ram0.

Alternative: Booting the Installation CD with BootX

If you have an OldWorld Mac the bootable portion of the livecd can't be used. The most simple solution is to use MacOS 9 or earlier to bootstrap into a Linux environment with a tool called BootX.

First, download BootX and unpack the archive. Copy the the BootX Extension from the unpacked archive into Extensions Folder and the BootX App Control Panel into Control Panels, both of which are located in your MacOS System Folder. Next, create a folder called "Linux Kernels" in your System folder and copy the apple kernel from the CD to this folder. Finally, copy apple.igz from the Installation CD boot folder into the MacOS System Folder.

To prepare BootX, start the BootX App Control Panel. First select the Options dialog and check Use Specified RAM Disk and select apple.igz from your System Folder. Continue back to the initial screen and ensure that the ramdisk size is at least 32000. Finally, set the kernel arguments as shown below:

cdroot root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc loop=image.squashfs looptype=squashfs console=tty0 

Check once more to make sure the settings are correct and then save the configuration. This saves typing just in case it doesn't boot or something is missing. Press the Linux button at the top of the window. If everything goes correctly, it should boot into the Installation CD. Continue with And When You're Booted...

Booting the Installation CD on an IBM pSeries, OpenPower and Power5 iSeries servers

Please check the README.kernel on the Installation CD for the latest information on how to boot various kernels and getting hardware support.

Most modern pSeries servers can boot from the CDROM drive through SMS ('1' when the “IBM IBM IBM” messages flash across the console). On some older pSeries boxes, sometimes the cds might not autoboot. You might have to set up your cdrom as a bootable device in the multi-boot menu. (F1 at startup) The other option is to jump into OF and do it from there:

1. Boot into OF (this is 8 from the serial cons or F8 from a graphics cons, start hitting the key when you see the keyboard mouse etc etc messages.
2. Run the command 0> boot cdrom:1,yaboot
3. Stand back and enjoy!

And When You're Booted...

You will be greeted by a root ("#") prompt on the current console. You can also switch to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get back to the one you started on by pressing Alt-F1. Due to the keyboard layout, you may need to press Alt-fn-Fx on Apple machines.

If you are installing Gentoo on a system with a non-US keyboard, use loadkeys to load the keymap for your keyboard. To list the available keymaps, execute ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386. On NewWorld machines or the Pegasos do not use the keymaps in ppc or mac as they are for ADB-based OldWorld machines.

(PPC uses x86 keymaps on most systems. The mac/ppc keymaps provided
 on the Installation CD are ADB keymaps and unusable with the Installation CD 
 kernel)
# ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386

Now load the keymap of your choice:

# loadkeys be-latin1

Now continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.