Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to successfully install Gentoo on your box.

Be sure to read the Gentoo PPC FAQ for help with some common installation related issues or if you're unsure as to just what's in that PowerPC machine you've got sitting on your desk right now.

The Gentoo Installation CDs are bootable CDs which contain a self-sustained Gentoo environment. They allow you to boot Linux from the CD. During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers are loaded. They are maintained by Gentoo developers.

All Installation CDs allow you to boot, set up networking, initialize your partitions and start installing Gentoo from the Internet. We currently provide two Installation CDs which are equaly suitable to install Gentoo from, as long as you're planning on performing an Internet-based installation using the latest version of the available packages.

If you wish to install Gentoo without a working Internet connection, please use the installation instructions described in the Gentoo 2006.0 Handbooks.

The two Installation CDs that we currently provide are:

• The Gentoo Minimal Installation CD, a small, no-nonsense, bootable CD which sole purpose is to boot the system, prepare the networking and continue with the Gentoo installation.
• The Gentoo Universal Installation CD, a bootable CD with the same abilities as the Minimal Installation CD. Additionally, it contains several stage3 tarballs (optimized for the individual subarchitectures).

To help you decide which Installation CD you need, we have written down the major advantages and disadvantages of each Installation CD.

The Minimal Installation CD is called install-ppc-minimal-2006.0.iso and takes up only 52 MB of diskspace. You can use this Installation CD to install Gentoo, but always with a working Internet connection only.

The Universal Installation CD is called install-ppc-universal-2006.0.iso and consumes about 578 MB on a CD. You can use this Installation CD to install Gentoo, and you can even use it to install Gentoo without a working internet connection, just in case you want to bring Gentoo to another PC than the one you are currently installing Gentoo on :)

You might find a Package CD on one of our mirrors. This CD is not an Installation CD but an additional resource that can be exploited during a networkless installation. It contains prebuilt packages (also known as the GRP set) that allow you to easily and quickly install additional applications (such as OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, ...) immediately after the networkless Gentoo installation.

If you intend to use the Packages CD to quickly install additional software, make sure that you use the same subarchitecture as the stage3 tarball you use.

A stage3 tarball is an archive containing a minimal Gentoo environment, suitable to continue the Gentoo installation using the instructions in this manual. Previously, the Gentoo Handbook described the installation using one of three stage tarballs. While Gentoo still offers stage1 and stage2 tarballs, the official installation method uses the stage3 tarball. If you are interested in performing a Gentoo installation using a stage1 or stage2 tarball, please read the Gentoo FAQ on How do I Install Gentoo Using a Stage1 or Stage2 Tarball?

You have chosen to use a Gentoo Installation CD. We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen Installation CD. We previously discussed the several available Installation CDs, but where can you find them?

You can download any of the Installation CDs (and, if you want to, a Packages CD as well) from one of our mirrors. The Installation CDs are located in the releases/ppc/2006.0/ppc32/installcd directory.

Inside that directory you'll find ISO-files. Those are full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.

In case you wonder if your downloaded file is corrupted or not, you can check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (such as install-ppc-minimal-2006.0.iso.DIGESTS). You can check the MD5 checksum with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5sum for Windows. If md5sum is not available on Mac OS X, see the Gentoo PPC FAQ for help.

Another way to check the validity of the downloaded file is to use GnuPG to verify the cryptographic signature that we provide (the file ending with .asc). Download the signature file and obtain the public key:

$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 17072058

Now verify the signature:

$ gpg --verify <signature file> <downloaded iso>

To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss cdrecord and K3B here; more information can be found in our Gentoo FAQ.

• With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc <downloaded iso file> (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path).
• With K3B, select Tools > CD > Burn Image. Then you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.

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 'C' until the CD loads.

After the Installation CD loaded, you will be greeted by a friendly welcome message and a boot: prompt 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.

You can 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 ppc32 followed by the desired option. In the example below, we'll force the kernel to use the OpenFirmware framebuffer instead of the device specific driver.

boot: ppc32 video=ofonly

If you don't need to add any options, just hit enter at this prompt, and a complete Gentoo Linux environment will be loaded from the CD. Continue with And When You're Booted....

On the Pegasos simply insert the CD and at the SmartFirmware boot-prompt type boot cd /boot/menu. This will open a small bootmenu where you can choose between several preconfigured video configs. If you need any special boot options you can append them to the command-line just like with Yaboot above. For example: boot cd /boot/pegasos video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75 mem=256M. The default kernel options (in case something goes wrong and you need it) are preconfigured with console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 init=/linuxrc looptype=squashfs loop=/image.squashfs udev nodevfs cdroot root=/dev/ram0.

If you have 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 your MacOS System Folder. Next, create a folder called "Linux Kernels" in your 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 your 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:

cdroot root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc loop=image.squashfs looptype=squashfs console=tty0 nodevfs udev

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. Continue with And When You're Booted...

You will be greeted by a root ("#") prompt on the current console. You can also switch to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get back to the one you started on by pressing Alt-F1. Due to the keyboard layout, you may need to press Alt-fn-Fx on Apple machines.

If you are installing Gentoo on a system with a non-US keyboard, use loadkeys to load the keymap for your keyboard. To list the available keymaps, execute ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386. On NewWorld machines or the Pegasos do not use the keymaps in ppc or mac as they are for ADB-based OldWorld machines.

(PPC uses x86 keymaps on most systems. The mac/ppc keymaps provided
 on the Installation CD are ADB keymaps and unusable with the Installation CD 
 kernel)
# ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386

Now load the keymap of your choice:

# loadkeys be-latin1

Now continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.

When the Installation CD boots, it tries to detect all your hardware devices and loads the appropriate kernel modules to support your hardware. In the vast majority of cases, it does a very good job. However, in some cases, it may not auto-load the kernel modules you need. If the PCI auto-detection missed some of your system's hardware, you will have to load the appropriate kernel modules manually.

In the next example we try to load the airport module. This module supports only the old Airport cards (802.11b). Airport Extreme (802.11g) is not supported on the InstallCD due to restrictions on firmware distribution.

# modprobe airport

On older iMacs, sometimes the network card is not detected properly. These use the BMAC driver:

# modprobe bmac

If you are an advanced user, you might want to tweak the IDE hard disk performance using hdparm. With the -tT options you can test the performance of your disk (execute it several times to get a more precise impression):

# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

To tweak, you can use any of the following examples (or experiment yourself) which use /dev/hda as disk (substitute with your disk):

Activate DMA:                                       # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
Activate DMA + Safe Performance-enhancing Options:  # hdparm -d 1 -A 1 -m 16 -u 1 -a 64 /dev/hda

If you plan on giving other people access to your installation environment or you want to chat using irssi without root privileges (for security reasons), you need to create the necessary user accounts and change the root password.

To change the root password, use the passwd utility:

# passwd
New password: (Enter your new password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter your password)

To create a user account, we first enter their credentials, followed by its password. We use useradd and passwd for these tasks. In the next example, we create a user called "john".

# useradd -m -G users john
# passwd john
New password: (Enter john's password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter john's password)

You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using su:

# su - john

If you want to view the Gentoo Handbook (either from-CD or online) during the installation, make sure you have created a user account (see Optional: User Accounts). Then press Alt-F2 to go to a new terminal and log in.

If you want to view the documentation on the CD you can immediately run links to read it:

# links /mnt/cdrom/docs/handbook/html/index.html

However, it is preferred that you use the online Gentoo Handbook as it will be more recent than the one provided on the CD. You can view it using links as well, but only after having completed the Configuring your Network chapter (otherwise you won't be able to go on the Internet to view the document):

# links http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ppc.xml

You can go back to your original terminal by pressing Alt-F1.

If you want to allow other users to access your computer during the Gentoo installation (perhaps because those users are going to help you install Gentoo, or even do it for you), you need to create a user account for them and perhaps even provide them with your root password (only do that if you fully trust that user).

To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:

# /etc/init.d/sshd start

To be able to use sshd, you first need to set up your networking. Continue with the chapter on Configuring your Network.