[seul-edu] Mac/Linux Xterminal progress

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

We spent a few more hours yesterday working on getting this Mac Quadra 650 set
up as a Linux Xterminal.  We finally had the install diskettes for MacOS
available, so we could repartition the 160 MB harddrive and reinstall MacOS on a small
partition.  We chose 20 MB for MacOS (necessary for boot purposes), 32 MB for
swap (with 16 MB of RAM), and the rest for a root partition.

Of course, all the Debian software we'd previously downloaded was erased by the
repartition, but we'd expected that.  We had a Debian m68k drv and a resc
diskette, plus one with the loaders that were required to start the LInux install. 
We loaded that one and kicked off the install.  The install crapped out with a
kernel fault while trying to read the SCSI harddrive's partition table.  We tried
again, and got past that to the initial prompt to choose a color or monochrome
installation, after which it again crapped out.  By this time the floppy was
making some horrible sounds, which didn't inspire our confidence at all.

We rebooted the Mac again and this time copied all the contents of the diskette
onto the small MacOS partition, then executed the loader from there.  That
worked perfectly!  Unfortunately, we still didn't have all the files we needed for a
base install of Debian, but we decided to go as far as we could before
stopping.  We successfully initialized the Linux swap and root partitions, and then shut
down gracefully.

We decided that our next step would be to put some small FTP client on the
MacOS partition and go out and get the files we needed, but after my partner left
for the evening I played around with my i386 Linux box and got netatalk running
properly.  I then went out and downloaded all the files we'll need to finish the
Linux install.  We'll find out if we can install Linux over an Appletalk mount;
if not, we'll have to move the files over to the MacOS partition and do a
harddrive install.  Either way, we expect to get that part done next time.  That will
be next week, the way it looks.  After that we'll have to decide just what
packages are required on the Mac (it has a tiny harddrive, after all) to run it as an
Xterminal, and then configure it properly.  I printed off a couple of articles
from the Linux Gazette that should be very helpful.

-- 
Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@suscom.net     those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain