openSUSE 11.1-1 for X5000 "experimental"

[xeno74]

Hi All,

I was able to install the old openSUSE 11.1 PowerPC on my AmigaOne X5000 today. It works very fast. Network and sound works without any problems.

Further information and download



There are still some repositories for openSUSE 11.1 PowerPC available.

Cheers,
Christian

[Roland]

Hi All,

I was able to install the old openSUSE 11.1 PowerPC on my AmigaOne X5000 today. It works very fast. Network and sound works without any problems.

Could you please give us, when you have some time, step by step instructions how to install openSUSE 11.1 on X5000? The link you gave seemed to be quite X1000 specific. BTW, does it work also with r7 240 Radeons...?

I would desperately like to have at least one working distro where you can login as ROOT. Using that account with full rights it would be much easier to 'tinker' with other distros (which I have not been able so far to get to work properly in my machine). Trying to manage the other distros via Ubuntu Live is hopeless for an unexperienced user as there are no rights to save or change any file via the normal end-user tools (using sudo, text based editors and long, obscure path strings is not for me...).

On the intell side, I use precisely openSUSE to 'control' other distros and as the 'boot distro'.

[xeno74]

Hi Roland,

openSUSE 11.1 is very old. It's from 2008. It's only suitable for tinkering and learning.
I don't know if it works with your graphics card. I use it with a Radeon HD4870. I don't recommend it for productive work. I use it for learning for the LPI exam because I need skills from old Linux distributions for it.

Cheers,
Christian

[xeno74]

Hi Roland,

I've packed my openSUSE installation in a tar.gz file.

Download: openSUSE-11.1-2-x1000-ppc64.tar.gz "experimental"

Known problems:

3D acceleration doesn't work

Be aware, that openSUSE is experimental and isn't supported.

Here are the installation instructions for openSUSE (based on the Fedora installation instructions by Pat Wall. Thanks to Pat )

You must have another Linux distribution already installed such as Debian, Ubuntu etc in order to install openSUSE 11.1-2. Login to your current Linux distribution, e.g. Debian or Ubuntu and create an ext3 partition of at least 20GB using GParted or similar tool of your choice.
You should also create a Linux swap partition.

Login to your current Linux distribution, e.g. Debian or Ubuntu, and open a terminal to complete the following steps.
Become the root user by entering

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su

<return>

Enter your root password <return>
Download a kernel for the X5000.
Unpack the kernel tarball and copy it to a partition on your X5000.

Create a mount point on which you want to mount the openSUSE partition:

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mkdir /mnt/opensuse

<return>

Mount the partition where you want to install openSUSE.

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mount -t ext3 /dev/sdXX /mnt/opensuse

<return>

Download the openSUSE tarball from the following URL: openSUSE-11.1-2-x1000-ppc64.tar.gz

Copy the tar.gz file to the partition where you want to install openSUSE.

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cp openSUSE-11.1-2-x1000-ppc64.tar.gz /mnt/opensuse

<return>

Change to /mnt/opensuse.

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cd /mnt/opensuse

<return>

Unpack the tarball.

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tar zxvf openSUSE-11.1-2-x1000-ppc64.tar.gz

<return>

Configure fstab to reflect your system e.g. replacing the strings with your own root partition
and swap partition respectively. In this example /dev/sdb2 is the root partition and /dev/sdb3 is the
swap partition.

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nano -w /mnt/opensuse/etc/fstab

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/dev/sdb2 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0

You can now reboot into your openSUSE installation:

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reboot

<return>

Booting openSUSE
To boot openSUSE at the U-Boot prompt you will need to do the following:
Remember to substitute the root partition (/dev/sdb2 in this example) that you installed openSUSE on.
(Note this is typed as a single line at the U-Boot prompt)

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X5000> setenv bootargs "root=/dev/sdb2 mem=3500M"

For example if you have a small boot partition on sda (sda1):

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X5000> load sata 0:1 1000000 uImage

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X5000> load sata 0:1 2000000 cyrus.dtb

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X5000> bootm 1000000 - 2000000

openSUSE will now boot to the “Shell Login” Screen.

Login into openSUSE with the administrator account root.

The default root password is: amigaone (all lower-case)

Start the KDE Display Manager with

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kdm

You can login with the user "amigaone".

The default password is: amigaone (all lower-case)

Have a lot of fun with openSUSE. Be aware, that openSUSE is experimental and isn't supported.

[Roland]

Hi Roland,
openSUSE 11.1 is very old. It's from 2008. It's only suitable for tinkering and learning.
I don't know if it works with your graphics card. I use it with a Radeon HD4870. I don't recommend it for productive work. I use it for learning for the LPI exam because I need skills from old Linux distributions for it.

I tried to start the installation under Ubuntu 16.04 following your instructions, but did not get even the first command to work...!

'Su' does not work with Ubuntu as I already knew, but trying to use 'sudo' did not work either... The command 'mkdir /mnt/opensuse', with or without sudo just gave the message 'no such file or directory'. Trying to create those dirs via graphical user interphase was not possible either. And as the Debian does not work in my machine either, I am out of luck...

[xeno74]

but trying to use 'sudo' did not work either...

Have you seen an error message after you typed 'sudo'?

-- Christian

[Roland]

Have you seen an error message after you typed 'sudo'?

No, sudo itself seems to work... If I e.g. write 'sudo ls', it asks the password and then lists the files. Not of course needed for ls, but just for testing...

This Ubuntu I used had been installed with the ''alternative script", and I had created there a new user acoount, to which I gave the administrator rights, and then removed them from the 'Liver User...'. Maybe that was not the correct way to do?

It just occurred to me... If I do the installation on an USB disk, is it possible to do it also on an Intel machine (with Linux)? The comands you have used are probably not PPC specific... I have here a Laptop with openSuse 13.1, and there I can log in as ROOT.

[xeno74]

Hi Roland,

Installing with the alternative script is the correct way. Yes, it is possible to decompress the archive on a USB stick with Linux on a PC.

Please post the output of the command groups.

My output:

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adm cdrom sudo audio dip video plugdev lpadmin sambashare

Does the command sudo su work?

Cheers,
Christian

[Roland]

Yes, it is possible to decompress the archive on a USB stick with Linux on a PC.

Ok, I got it installed with OpenSUSE 13.1! The only thing missing was 'Nano', but the system kindly adviced how to download it (I did not realize it was just a text editor, could have used another one as well).

Now, what Kernel should be used with it...? As it is an old distro, should I try some older one? There were some kernels already in the 'Boot' directory, is any of them usable with X5000?

Please post the output of the command groups.

Here is mine:

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 root adm dialout fax cdrom floppy tape sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev lpadmin nopasswdlogin scanner sambashare 

Does the command sudo su work?

Yes. So, that is the workaround if 'su' is needed...? Thanks!

[Roland]

@xeno74

I already tested booting of OpenSUSE 11 with v. 4.9.38 and 4.12.0 Kernels. They both stopped at the message "setting up the hardware clock" !? Is there a way to skip this comand?

Could this be somehow related to the realtime clock problem (discussed already in the X5000 forum) my Cyrus board has? (The realtime clock does not advance at all, it only keeps the latest time/date saved with 'setclock save').