Handbook:PPC/Blocks/Booting

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 until the CD loads.

After the installation CD loaded, a boot prompt will show up at the bottom of the screen.

We provide one generic kernel, ppc32. This kernel is built with support for multiple CPUs, but it will boot on single processor machines as well.

It is possible to 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  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.

If no options are needed, just type ppc32 at this prompt, and a complete Gentoo Linux environment will be loaded from the CD.

Alternative: Booting the installation CD on a Pegasos system
On the Pegasos simply insert the CD and at the SmartFirmware boot-prompt type.

This will open a small bootmenu that allows users to choose between several preconfigured video configs. Any special boot options can be appended to the command-line just like with Yaboot above. For example:

The default kernel options (in case something goes wrong) are preconfigured with.

Alternative: Booting the installation CD with BootX
With 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 the MacOS System Folder. Next, create a folder called "Linux Kernels" in the System folder and copy the ppc32 kernel from the CD to this folder. Finally, copy ppc32.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 ppc32.igz from the 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:

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.

Setting the keyboard map
After boot, a root ("#") prompt appears on the current console. It is possible to switch to other consoles by pressing +,  +  and  +. Get back to the first one by pressing +. Due to the keyboard layout, it may be necessary to press +  +  on Apple machines.

When installing Gentoo on a system with a non-US keyboard, use loadkeys to load the keymap for the keyboard. To list the available keymaps, execute.

Now load the keymap of choice: