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Scooping the Macintosh Performa 6116CD
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By thelizman , Section Help! []
Posted on Mon Sep 09, 2002 at 12:00:00 PM PST
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At this point, anyone can install Scoop. It's so easy that the challenge now is to install it
on the most severly whacked out machine they can. Until someone installs Scoop on an X-Box, I think
this ought to take the cake: Scoop 0.8.1 powered by MKLinux 2.0.38 running on a Macintosh Performa 6116CD
(PowerPC 601).
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First, the machine
The Performa 6116CD features a 66 MHz PowerPC 601, and I was able to upgrade it to the
maximum 72 MB of RAM. The hard drive is a 700 MB SCSI drive made by Seagate and cobranded for Apple. Likewise
the CD-ROM was a 2x Sony drive relabeled as Apple's own.
This model was the first 60 Mhz personal computer on the market when it was introduced in March of 1994 (to be
trumped by Intel with the 66 Mhz486 DX2 in August) and was the first Mac to carry the PowerPC processor.
Two problems. The first is that MacOS had way too much overhead to run the forum.
I'm not even sure I could get some of the software to run for MacOS 8 (which was the lowest version I could
find). Moreover, I was more familiar with setting up the software on Linux. The obvious
answer (given the company were in) is to go with Linux...except for one problem: This is a Nubus Mac, which
uses the "old world ROM". The boot code for this Mac is written in the prom, which handles the boot strap
tasks normally carried out by an operating systems boot loader. This isn't a problem for Macintosh computers
made with the New World "PCI" architecture, but I didn't have one of those.
Ironically, the answer comes from Apple itself...sort of. In October 1994 Apple started working with
The Open Software Foundation (today known as The Open Group) on porting Linux to the Macintosh PowerPC
platform and to be run on top of the Mach Microkernel. The Mach Microkernal establishes an
abstraction layer between the actual Linux kernal and the machine layer. MkLinux
was born. Soon thereafter, Linux became widely available for the newer PCI based Macs. Unfortunately,
Linux users began to want more functionality out of the hardware, but Apple didn't want to make the
information available. MkLinux users began to split from the broader Linux community because you didn't
have to have MkLinux to have a Linux OS on newer PCI Macs. There were still plenty of Nubus PowerPCs
around, so MkLinux found a reason to live, and is currently maintained by a small close-knit community.
Let's Get It On
The first thing you'll do is drop in your MacOS CD (I used 8, but it really doesn't matter as long as
it'll run on your Mac). Hold down C while the Mac is booting, and it'll boot from the CD ROM drive.
Only a MacOS CD will do this: Mac has kept the BOOT ROM code a guarded secret, and nobody has ever
bothered to discover why only certain CD's will boot and only in an Apple CD-ROM drive. Anyway, do
a bare bones install of MacOS. This will take about 95 MB of hard drive space, but you'll want to
partition the disc with 115 MB of space for good measure. Typically, you'll have the MacOS loader,
and two small partitions with updated hard drive drivers installed. Leave the remainder of the disk
blank, do not initialize the part of the hard drive that is to house the Linux install.
Once your MacOS setup is complete (20 minutes, tops), butt up normally and finish making settings.
Then, you'll need to insert your MkLinux CD. You can download MkLinux ISO images and burn them to
a CD, or you can download the files individually from the MkLinux FTP site. On the CD, in the
MkLinux-Install folder, there are folders named "Extensions", "Control Panels", and "Preferences".
Copy the contents of these folders into the MacOS System folders of the same name. This simple act
will install the boot loader extension and the MkLinux control panels.
Next you'll need to make sure the boot loader configuration file is correctly configured for your
system. Click on the Apple Menu, and go to Control Panels and select MkLinux (hey, where'd that
come from?). Click on the button marked "Custom", and SimpleText shall appear before thee. There
are a number of lines that are preceded by "#" marks. These marks cause the rest of the line after
them to be ignored by the boot loader extension you installed earlier. For the installation phase,
you will need to make sure the line that reads "rootdev=/dev/scd0" does not have a hash mark in
front of it. This tells the control panel to boot from the CD-ROM drive. Apple + S and Apple + Q
to save and quite SimpleText. Now, make sure MkLinux is selected, and click reboot. Almost immediately,
your Mac will reboot, and the MacOS loading screen will momentarily appear. And that is when everything
gets weird.
Wait, I thought this was MkLinux!
The first thing you'll likely notice on reboot is that you're presented with a "MacOS is Starting"
screen. Panic if you must, but pretty soon a screen pops up that prompts you to choose whether you're
going to boot to MkLinux or MacOS. Choose MkLinux (duh!).
Text will stream across the screen, and then you'll get a blue screen with rather primitive looking graphics.
Welcome to the highly advanced world of Linux. Just to prepare you, know the following facts:
- "All Your Mouse Are Belong To Us", so you'll have to use the tab, arrow, and enter keys for all input operations.
- MkLinux is actually just the kernel and Mach Microkernel. Everything else runs just like any other Linux PowerPC
system. So, you're going to see a lot of RedHat Linux and Yellow Dog Linux stuff here. The installer itself is
the generic RedHat installer for RedHat Linux 6.0 PPC.
- You're going to be prompted to partition your disk, and
you'll be offered a choice between Disk Druid and FDISK to do this. I'll warn you right now, you cannot partition
with Disk Druid, and the system won't let you. Go straight to FDISK, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Using
FDISK, first create a 125 MB partition and set it to be formatted as "Linux Swap". Then, create a growable
partition using the remaining space on the hard drive (however much is left, make the partition 10 MB less
- don't ask, just do it). Write down the device name for the partition that your Linux install is going to
be on, it'll usually be something like "/dev/sda7". Select "Done" and hit enter.
Now you're faced with the
DiskDruid you weren't allowed to use earlier. Select your Linux install partition, and for a label enter
"/" without the quotes. This means you have chosen that partition as the Linux file systems root.
A few more clicks with obvious answers and we find ourselves at the package install screen. Select "server",
and then check "Choose Individual Packages". We are going to manually uncheck everything but Lynx, MkLinux
Kernel Headers, and anything that looks like it has to do with C or C++ development (libc, glibc, glibc-devel
etc). Also, make sure that you install YACC and BISON (either alone is supposed to work, but in fact some
programs prefer YACC over BISON when you make your programs).
Now, sit back and relax while your machine appears to have locked completely up. It will take several
minutes to format the partitions, followed by about an hour of copying stuff. You will be doing a lot
of waiting before this is over; I hope you didn't have plans.
Years Later, Linux is Installed
Eventually, the packages will finish installing. You will need to set up a root password account
(remember your password, or you'll have to do all this over again). Configure your LAN (if you're
setting this server up on dialup, I'll smack you), and you'll be finished. Reboot the computer, but
this time when you see the OS selection screen, select MacOS instead.
Now what you have to do is go back into the MkLinux control panel and select "Custom" again. You'll
edit the file by placing a "#" in front of the CD-ROM device. Then, look for the entry that says
"bootdev="/dev/sda0" under "SCSI Hard Drive". Uncomment this line out, and fill in the proper value
in place of "sda0". Save and Quit, then select reboot because we've got business to do.
Things Your Mother Didn't Tell You
Now we have MkLinux installed, and the default option is to have the boot loader
boot to it automatically. I'm not going to go into details on how to install the next
few necessary utilities, and all of the network related setup should've been accomplished
during OS install. You'll need to download Perl 5, MySQL, and Apache. I suggest you use
the stable versions, since they are more likely to compile under MkLinux's included GCC
compiler. Also, you can install Perl5 as an RPM that can be downloaded from Yellow Dog
Linux or RPMFind.net. I was not successful in installing MySQL from a package, so I
had to compile it from source. It takes about 10 hours to make the binary packages, so don't
expect to do this all in one day. Also, you should not install Apache as a package, since
it will likely not include the sources. You'll need the sources when you install mod_perl.
Now, the one part where most people get hung up on a Scoop install is in installing
mod_perl with Apache. This isn't a Scoop thing: It's a mod_perl/Apache thing, and it
gets worse under MkLinux. I guarantee you that no matter what you do you will not
be able to successfully install mod_perl with Apache and have it work right away. For
some reason mod_perl simply does not install all the necessary modules, and
even though Apache will work after you compile and install, it will deliver an error
message after you install Scoop (provided you skip the CPAN installation). So here's
the deal: You will install mod_perl and Apache together, start Apache to test it,
then shut Apache down. Follow the instructions for installing Scoop using the provided
install script. When you get to the part about downloading and installing necessary
mod_perl modules from CPAN, (you'll actually have to configure CPAN the first time),
the install script for Scoop will ask you if all modules were successfully installed.
Answer "N" and it will loop through the CPAN section again. You will do this several
times until you get a success message. Then you will be able to continue with the
Scoop install.
It Really Works...Sort Of
First of all, make no mistake: This setup is god awfully slow as a production unit. You
would never run a production scoop site off of this. I did this for several reasons, not
the least of which is that my boss doesn't want to lay out money for a Scoop server without
seeing it in action. The PowerPC 6116CD was the only box I could spare (and I'm already
using two others for internal servers).
Also, one problem you may have is that the mysqld hangs at startup. I have tried several ways
of running this, and the result is all the same: apparent hanging. However, this is only
an illusion: it didn't hang, it just took over the terminal. If you run MySQL from startup,
it'll hold up the boot process for a few minutes. You can either CTRL+C or just wait, and it
will still run in the background.
Since it's not likely to go into production, I've let the server languish for attention. I
will likely take it down soon and commit it to other uses, but if you'd like to poke
around it is located at scoop.promarketinc.com.
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