Gentoo Linux on IBM RS/6000 B50

It’s done 🙂

I got a working PPC Gentoo Linux ontop of a IBM RS/6000 B50, including working autoboot from disk.
It took me roundabout three days to get a working configuration, just ask my girlfriend…
So i hope this will help a few people out there, comments are welcome.

One hint in front: You need time, MUCH time, the kernel compiling takes a very long time to complete, in my case 2 hours, because the processor isn’t really fast. Maybe a tutorial will follow introducing use of DistCC oder Icecream for distributed Cross-Compiling after installation.

The Gentoo PPC CD doesn’t boot on the system, you need to get another working distribution. In my case i used a OpenSUSE 11.1 PPC CD.

Start into SMS (Press 1 when the Server starts the Keyboard, SCSI, …) and select 2 – –> 3 – –> 2 – (Here you must press Return to continue) and select the OpenSUSE System to boot.

Now i didn’t use the Installer, just boot the Rescue Environment and install the Gentoo system using the Gentoo PPC Handbook.

Pay attention while partitioning the disk, i needed the first partition, the PReP partition, to be around 8MB in size.

When installing the Yaboot loader use the following configuration, just edit the Kernel-Name and Partitons to fit your environment:

boot=/dev/sda1
device=disk:

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=linux
root=/dev/sda3
partition=3
append="console=ttyS1,9600"
read-only

And install it using „mkofboot -b /dev/sda1“, acknowledge the question to overwrite the existing partition.

Name the kernel you want to use in the /boot directory vmlinux or someting similar, not the full build, this makes it easier to swap the kernel without rewriting the OF boot parameters.

While rebooting the system first time enter the OpenFirmware (Press 8 when the Server starts the Keyboard, SCSI, …) and enter the following commands to enable autoboot from the first harddisk:

setenv boot-device disk:1
setenv boot-file /boot/vmlinux root=/dev/sda3 console=ttyS1,9600
boot

If you need additional kernel parameters, just append them. Now the system should boot up, dont forget to set the networking parameters correctly to access the machine afterwards 😉

Additionally here a link to my working Kernel configuration file, not as slim as possible but – hey – it’s working.

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