[H-GEN] Fedora Core 5 for PPC needed for the distro server.

[Matthew Sellers]

Tony Nugent wrote:

> [ ...to answer my own question... ]
> 
> If anyone else is planning to use FC5 as a VMware guest OS, then I would highly
> advise looking through the vmware support pages and mailing lists before
> starting out (hint: search in the KB for "fedora core 5 install" and go from
> there).
> 
> There are problems installing FC5 as a vmware guest right from the start.  (BTW,
> the VMware host OS I'm using is winXP, although the same problems occur using
> linux as the host OS).
> 
> If the virtual machine is configured with a SCSI rather than an IDE disk, then
> it needs to have the SLI Logic SCSI driver loaded before the disk will be seen
> (which is documented nowhere).

I had been meaning to comment on this myself. I recently installed FC5 
on vmware server and ran into the same scsi difficulty. I installed it 
from the DVD from the June issue of Linux Format magazine. I found the 
text mode install to be more stable.

The host OS was Debian Etch AMD64. VMware required some chroot fiddling 
to get the required 32 libraries for compatability.

> Also, when initially selecting (in vmware) the type of linux OS that will be
> installed, there is some debate about whether it is better to use "Redhat Linux
> 9" or "Other linux 2.6 kernel". (I used the former, but resorted to
> re-configuring the virtual disk as an IDE device rather than SCSI before I found
> the solution to the missing scsi driver).  In fact, Fedora is not even listed as
> one of the choices of linux OS types.
> 
> During the installation, be sure to select the development packages including
> kernel-devel package, the gcc compiler, libraries and binutils etc - they're
> needed for getting the vmware modules, X driver and tools working.  Otherwise
> you'll need to manually install these RPMs (and their dependencies).
> 
> You'll need to read the FC5 docs carefully about how to prepare the kernel
> sources for first use once they are installed... redhat does it all "their way"
> (as per usual).  Note that the actual kernel SRPMs did not come with the binary
> distribution, they need to be downloaded separately (hint: read the FC5 docs
> carefully).

Using yum I did an update, then updated the kernel and installed kernel 
headers. I also installed the development packages that you mention. I 
didn't bother with kernel source.

It almost felt like Debian. (First time I've played with Fedora core.)

> Once installed, the VMware (kernel driver) and X11 modules and tools don't
> compile and install correctly by default unless some 3rd-party patches to the
> tools (not directly available on the VMware support site) are used, along with
> some additional manual tweaking to the xorg.conf and other system files.

This did not give me any trouble. Perhaps first doing a kernel upgrade 
allowed me to bypass this problem. The default VMware tools installed 
fine using the provided rpm.

> In the end, it probably would have been less painful to give FC5 a test run on a
> stand-alone box on its own, rather than in a VMware virtual machine.  It
> required lots of tweaking after going through perl scripts and mailing lists
> etc, but I did finally manage to get it working.  (Although I can get the
> vmmouse and X11 drivers working ok, I have never been able to do cut'n'paste
> to-and-from the guest and host machines).

I found the install under vmware to be worthwhile. I don't otherwise 
have the hardware lying around to do practice/test installs most of the 
time.

> One fun thing that I did discover experimenting with this, is that it is
> possible to easily run a linux live-boot cdrom or dvd disk (like Knoppix etc) in
> a VMware window with the need for only a tiny virtual filesystem (mainly for
> swap, then for maintaining small config changes and updates with unionfs).  Very
> cool.

I'll have to try this.