Finding The Files
If you have a RedHat m68k Linux CDROM you can probably skip most of this section. Some of these CDs are missing a few files, so you might have to refer to the section below to locate them.
If you don't have a RedHat m68k Linux CDROM your next step is to locate and download all the required files. They can all be found on Aminet, the m68k Linux archive on Sunsite, and the RedHat m68k archive.
Aminet [searchtool] [mirrors] [anonymous FTP] (USA)
Aminet [searchtool] [mirrors] [anonymous FTP] (Germany)
m68k Linux Archive [mirrors] (USA)
m68k Linux Archive [mirrors] (Germany)
RedHat m68k Archive (FTP, Denmark), RedHat m68k Archive (HTTP, Denmark)
As shown above, Aminet and the m68k Linux archive have several mirror sites.
Note that www.redhat.com does NOT yet mirror the current RedHat m68k Linux files.
The download files are divided into two major groups, Amiga setup files and RedHat installation image files.
Amiga Setup Files:
You will need to download these files for use on your Amiga:
lha - A file compression/decompression utility.
untgz - A unix-style tar.gz decompression utility for AmigaDos. This program has a bug in that specifying a nonexistent filename may crash AmigaDos- be careful.
File2Disk.lha - Used to create the supplemental RedHat install diskette.
vmlinux-2.0.33pl1-Amiga.tar.gz - Linux kernel image with most drivers compiled-in. This is not a perfect solution, but it allows you to reboot into linux after the install- so you can rebuild your own (customized) kernel.
After downloading these files, you need to extract the lha, untgz, and File2Disk programs onto your Amiga. It would probably be easiest if you copy the extracted executable files into some directory in your AmigaDos program search-path.
Note: I usually copy the archives shown above to an empty :temp directory, extract the contents, copy the executables to somewhere in the search path, then delete everything in the temp directory tree. Don't delete the original vmlinux tar.gz file yet, you still need it for the next step.
Copy the vmlinux-2.0.33-Amiga.tar.gz file to your temp directory.
Extract the contents by typing: untgz vmlinux-2.0.33pl1-Amiga.tar.gz
Rename the resulting vmlinux file to vmlinux_post_install and place it in your redhat/images directory.
Create Local Directory Tree for RedHat files:
Create a directory off the root of your Amiga hard drive called redhat. Under this redhat directory create another called images. Be careful to preserve the upper/lower case names shown below, particularly on Linux machines.
Create the following directory structure on your local hard disk:
Note that the base directory of the actual FTP site is: ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/680x0/
Now copy the vmlinux-reboot file we extracted earlier into your new :redhat/images directory.
RedHat Setup Files:
Now you need to download the RedHat install files. They should be placed in your local :redhat/images/ directory.
(Linux bootloader for use under AmigaDos)
(Linux initial ramdisk image)
(Linux initial ramdisk image, with support for FTP/localdisk)
(image of supplemental floppy disk)
(install kernel image)
Note: Netscape sometimes wants to save the downloading vmlinux file as an html file, override this by specifying the all-files mode in the download requestor.
If you plan on performing an install via FTP or local-disk then you need to use the ginitrd.img ramdisk image, or create a supplemental diskette. You can create the supplemental floppy disk on your Amiga by entering the command:
File2Disk supp.img 0
Which will copy the supplemental disk image to floppy disk 0 ( your DF0: )
Sometimes the amiboot-5.6 program will have strange file attributes after the download. I had to fix it with the following AmigaDos commands:
protect amib#? -S
protect amib#? +E
Downloading RedHat Content
Now for the messy part: You must recreate an image of the RedHat m68k Linux directory structure on your system and download most of the files found on that FTP site. It makes no difference if you download the files onto an Amiga AFFS filesystem, or onto some other Linux system that you have access to. In any case this can be a very tedious operation.
Now download the RedHat filesystem image:
Note that the base directory of the actual FTP site is: ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/680x0/
This last download part will take several hours. If you have a painfully slow modem, or can accept a stripped-down Linux installation, check the Wimping Out On FTP Download section of this document.
Although I provide a URL/link to the RPMS directory below, its much more practical to use a shell-based FTP client to download the contents of this directory.
Now download the RPMs:
Lastly, you may download the optional (i.e, not required) RPM updates:
Hint: Linux shell-based FTP sessions are capable of downloading a tar'd archive of an entire directory- simply append .tar to the directory name. You should do this only if you have a fast, reliable connection. Most Web-browsers do not seem to be capable of this time-saving feature.
Big Hint: Download the howto rpms later, only after a successful install. They are very large and require a long time to download. They can easily be installed later when you get your system online.